Say you are a store manager.

Your store has a prominent display at the storefront. Historically, products placed on the display had a sales boost of 5%.

Why?

Product awareness turns passive browsers into interested shoppers.

Imagine.

It is a cold day. It is snowing outside. You are traveling from Florida to New York City. It’s an opportunity to shop for boots.

You are walking in Soho. You have entered five shoe stores. Nothing is interesting. You are tired. You want to eat. Then, out of your eye, you notice a pair of boots on the storefront display.

That’s what happened to me.

The boots in the storefront display were not exactly what I wanted, but they were close enough to get me to go inside the store.

That’s the power of product placement.

Let’s get into it.

🤔What’s Product Placement in Retail Stores?

Product Placement refers to placing products in specific places in the store. It is a common selling technique in physical stores.

For example, brands will pay to place products on supermarket shelves.

Apparel retailers place clothes depending on their in-store life cycle, with “what’s new” on the storefront and discounted items in the back of the store.

With our boots, the product placement is at the storefront display.

So,

What is the” job” of the storefront display?

😃Behavior Analytics

Storefronts define the store.

As you walk into the store, the storefront display dominates your attention. Therefore, the storefront display is often reserved for premium products.

For example,

In a shoe store, you will often see boots in the winter, sandals in the summer, sneakers for casual, high heels in luxury, and athletic runners for sport.

The storefront display is the first touchpoint for customer engagement.

In the other words,

If the job of the window is to generate attention from people passing by, then the job of the storefront is to bring them inside the store.

Depending on your technology, you define customer engagement in the storefront display. With eye-tracking and gaze-tilting solutions, you evaluate attention.

For real-time analytics, location and time are great.

• # of store visitors defines the opportunity for engagement.
• # of people in the storefront zone captures active interest.
• Optimal Engage Time defines engagement (30 to 120 seconds)
• # of people with Optimal Engage Time are motivated shoppers.
• % Engagement Rate (#Engaged /#Visitors) evaluates the storefront display performance.

😎Win-Win-Win Alignment (So What?)

The store manager gets the location and time data in real time.

Now what?

It depends on the type of product placement. The store manager will work with the data differently if the store is a supermarket, an electronics store, or a luxury boutique.

But boots are made for walking...

In the boots’ scenario, the store’s staff has the most influence on sales. In short, customer service matters most.

# Service Events

Because staff interaction significantly impacts selling boots, you want to track the number of service events.

In our shoe store, the employees bring shoes from the backroom. Customers want to wear shoes in their size and preferred colors before buying.

% Service Intensity

The customer-to-staff ratio captures the capacity of the store to service the shoppers in real-time.

(Hint: Great store managers understand this concept deeply and adjust staff availability based on what happens in the store.)

Optimal Service Time

While Service Intensity impacts the response time for a call for help, the Optimal Service Time is about the length of the service event itself.

For example, it takes about 30 to 180 seconds to bring one or two pairs of boots from the backroom to the sales floor.

(Advanced: if the service took 10 minutes, you want to dig deeper.)

% Service Events with Optimal Service Time

This is a magic metric because a Service Event with Optimal Service Time will theoretically lead to a purchase.

(Advanced: if you don’t get a purchase, you want to evaluate sales training.)

% Conversion Rate for Product Placement

A 1% increase in sales conversions will often lead to a 5% increase in sales.

(Advanced: this is where the Average Order Value matters).

To recap,

To evaluate product placement in storefront displays, you measure customer engagement. In shoe stores, customer service impacts sales.

🤣PEACE for Profit (Get Started!)

You are now ready to experiment!

You start with a hypothesis. You assume that products placed in the storefront display will increase sales.

For example

You decided to place winter boots on the storefront display because it is winter in New York City. The boots placement will run for three weeks. And you ensure that the store is staffed with the Optimal Service Intensity.

Your target outcome is a 5% Sales Uplift for winter boots.

Here’s the step-by-step framework:

💲Amplify Store Sales

Product Placement in stores is often the core of financial relationships between brands and retailers. For example, product placement is a revenue stream for grocery stores and telecom operators.

The story ends with:

I got my traveling red boots. I paid full price. But I’m happy. I found what I wanted.

Cheers,

Ronny Max

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Behavior Analytics Academy trains people and teams to increase conversions, sales, and profits in physical environments. Build Profitable Ecosystems.

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