Wal-Mart wants its customers to be able to find everything on their shopping lists and to do it quickly.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, the average shopper at a Wal-Mart Supercenter spends 21 minutes in the store and, in the process of speeding through the shop, fails to find 30 percent of the items they came in to buy.
It is numbers such as these that have Wal-Mart and other big-box operators looking to find ways to make it easier for consumers to shop stores and, hopefully, find all the items they want to purchase.
Wal-Mart has made some changes in stores with better signage to help consumers find what they need, prominently displaying hot sellers and sales items in visible locations and improving checkout staffing to speed consumers through the final phase of the shopping experience.
The retailer has rolled out a new scheduling system to help it staff according to shopper need. Wal-Mart said 85 percent of its stores using the system posted sales gains in March and April that were twice that of stores not using the program.
"We don't decide how long the people are in the store," Wal-Mart marketing chief Stephen Quinn told The Journal. "What we decide is how easy it is for you within the 21 minutes you've allocated to get what you want."
Others are also working to make the experience of hunting in a big-box store less overwhelming as well as physically and emotionally tiring.
Best Buy, according to the WSJ report, is running a 60-store pilot program with "personal shopping assistants" on hand to help make purchasing decisions on big ticket items, such as home theater systems, a little easier. The PSAs are distinguished from normal Best Buy staff with button-down dress shirts compared to the navy blue polo uniform worn by most team members on the floor.
Target has used intuitive merchandising by grouping like items in single departments. Instead of having items such as baby clothing, baby food and strollers in separate areas, Target has brought them all together in a single area of the store.
Target spokesperson Lena Michaud said customers "have responded favorably (to the merchandising change) and it has translated into positive financial results."
Discussion Question: How do you see big boxes attempting to make it easier, dare we say more convenient, to shop these stores? What strategies do you see as most promising in speeding up the big-box shopping experience for consumers while at the same time delivering the products they want?