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Why You Buy More Than You Planned: The Psychology of Retail Design · The iDesign Lab Podcast

• 0:00
  Voice Over: This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design.
• 0:06
  Voice Over: Curator of interiors, furnishings, and lifestyles.
• 0:09
  Voice Over: Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott.
• 0:17
  Voice Over: iDesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends.
• 0:37
  TIffany Woolley: Welcome to the iDesign Lab Podcast.
• 0:40
  TIffany Woolley: Have you ever gone into a store for one item and walked out with many?
• 0:44
  Scott Woolley: Or logged onto Amazon to buy batteries and somehow ended up spending like$200 on other stuff?
• 0:51
  TIffany Woolley: We've all been there.
• 0:52
  TIffany Woolley: And if you've done it, you're not alone.
• 0:55
  Scott Woolley: And you're also not crazy.
• 0:56
  Scott Woolley: In many cases, the store, the website, packaging, and even product placement were designed to influence exactly that behavior.
• 1:05
  Scott Woolley: Nobody thinks they're being influenced.
• 1:09
  TIffany Woolley: Well, they don't think so, but maybe they're going to believe it after they listen to us here.
• 1:14
  TIffany Woolley: Most people think it's all rational buying decisions.
• 1:19
  Scott Woolley: The reality is that their buying decisions are often emotional first and logical second.
• 1:26
  TIffany Woolley: We like to think we bought something because we needed it.
• 1:30
  Scott Woolley: But many times we bought it because we wanted to feel associated with it.
• 1:35
  Scott Woolley: Let me tell you a little story.
• 1:37
  Scott Woolley: When I had my grocery stores, I learned something fascinating very quickly.
• 1:42
  Scott Woolley: Customers would come in with a shopping list, like most people do, and every intention of sticking to it.
• 1:50
  Scott Woolley: But I also knew something.
• 1:52
  Scott Woolley: Most buying decisions weren't made by the customers that entered the store.
• 1:57
  Scott Woolley: They were made while they were walking through the store.
• 2:00
  TIffany Woolley: And that surprises people because they assume shoppers know exactly what they're going to buy.
• 2:07
  Scott Woolley: Not even close.
• 2:08
  Scott Woolley: In fact, I used to joke that people had to buy their way through my stores.
• 2:13
  Scott Woolley: And I carefully merchandise products so customers would constantly be discovering new items on the end caps, on the corners.
• 2:22
  Scott Woolley: I mean, all over the store.
• 2:23
  Scott Woolley: Specialty displays, seasonal products, new products, limited time offers.
• 2:29
  Scott Woolley: By the time most of my customers reached the checkout, they were spending typically$20 to$25 more than they originally planned because most of the items that they were buying weren't on their list.
• 2:42
  Scott Woolley: They were impulse items.
• 2:44
  TIffany Woolley: And it wasn't because anyone pressured them.
• 2:47
  Scott Woolley: Exactly.
• 2:48
  Scott Woolley: They generally wanted products, the products.
• 2:50
  Scott Woolley: We simply created opportunities for them to discover things they didn't know they wanted five minutes earlier.
• 2:57
  Scott Woolley: You know, packaging itself is sometimes the silent salesperson.
• 3:01
  Scott Woolley: Packaging may be the most underappreciated salesperson in the world.
• 3:07
  TIffany Woolley: Because customers often decide whether to pick something up long before they know anything about the product.
• 3:14
  Scott Woolley: And sometimes packaging isn't protecting the product, it's selling the product.
• 3:19
  Scott Woolley: You know, there's a real philosophy in that.
• 3:22
  TIffany Woolley: Yeah, think of the Cartier Red Box or the Tiffany Blue box.
• 3:26
  Scott Woolley: Or the Apple White box.
• 3:28
  TIffany Woolley: Exactly.
• 3:28
  TIffany Woolley: People often assume luxury buyers are purchasing better products.
• 3:34
  Scott Woolley: Sometimes they are, but many times they're buying something else.
• 3:38
  Scott Woolley: They're buying status, they're buying exclusivity, they're buying a story, they're buying how the product makes them feel.
• 3:48
  Scott Woolley: One of the most powerful forces in buying behavior is social proof.
• 3:54
  Scott Woolley: If everyone else wants it, well, I assume that I must have it as well.
• 3:59
  TIffany Woolley: It's why restaurants with lines attract even more customers.
• 4:03
  TIffany Woolley: It's why five-star reviews do matter, and why bestseller signs work on online shopping.
• 4:11
  TIffany Woolley: It's really a science.
• 4:12
  TIffany Woolley: And this is how you know people really connect.
• 4:16
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, online retail retailers know more about buying behavior than ever before.
• 4:23
  Scott Woolley: They know what we're looking for, what we clicked on, what we're almost going to buy and almost bought.
• 4:31
  TIffany Woolley: What's in our shopping carts?
• 4:33
  TIffany Woolley: Sometimes it feels like Amazon knows what we're thinking before we even do.
• 4:38
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, it's the retargeting effect.
• 4:40
  TIffany Woolley: Let's talk about Target because somehow people walk in for toothpaste and leave with hundreds of dollars worth of stuff they don't need.
• 4:48
  Scott Woolley: Target has practically become a national case study on impulse buying.
• 4:53
  TIffany Woolley: And that's not an accident.
• 4:55
  TIffany Woolley: It would be by design.
• 4:57
  Scott Woolley: Right.
• 4:57
  Scott Woolley: And just how they the layout of the product and the placement of the displays, the merchandising mix, all those are designed to encourage discovery.
• 5:07
  TIffany Woolley: Are we buying products or are we buying feelings?
• 5:11
  TIffany Woolley: Maybe the bigger question isn't why we buy things we don't need.
• 5:16
  TIffany Woolley: Maybe it's why we want them in the first place.
• 5:19
  Scott Woolley: That's exactly right.
• 5:21
  Scott Woolley: Most purchases are connected to a feeling: comfort, status, convenience, security, excitement, hope.
• 5:29
  TIffany Woolley: Belonging.
• 5:30
  TIffany Woolley: The product is often just that vehicle.
• 5:33
  TIffany Woolley: The emotion is what we're really buying.
• 5:36
  Scott Woolley: After spending years in retail, I learned that people rarely buy based on logic alone.
• 5:43
  Scott Woolley: The most successful brands understand human nature.
• 5:46
  Scott Woolley: They understand emotion.
• 5:47
  Scott Woolley: They understand desire, and they understand the shopping experience.
• 5:53
  TIffany Woolley: Which means the next time that you walk into a store for a milk and you leave with three bags of things you never planned on buying.
• 6:01
  Scott Woolley: You'll know there was probably a lot of design behind that decision than you realized.
• 6:07
  TIffany Woolley: So I hope you enjoyed that tidbit today.
• 6:10
  TIffany Woolley: Listen in for Design Lab Podcast and hear our next one.
• 6:14
  TIffany Woolley: Stay tuned.
• 6:16
  Voice Over: We'll see you soon.
• 6:18
  Voice Over: iDesign Labs Podcast is an SW group production in association with the Five Star and TW Interiors.
• 6:25
  Voice Over: To learn more about iDesign Lab or TW Interiors, please visit TWInteriors.com.