SHOPPING CHARACTERISTICS

The founder of Envirosell (the firm that records and measures what’s going on in the stores) Paco Underhill says that people love to shop; it’s in our genes. Markets are not only buy goods but they’re place to seen andbe seen.
Envirosell monitors 50.000 to 70.000 consumers during a year… Some results from the surveillance;
- 2/3 of supermarket purchases are unplanned
- Shoppers love to touch merchandise and most unplanned purchases follow touching
- Shoppers love discovery and too many signs take adventure out the feeling of adventure.
- Shoppers don’t like line ups. The out of stock is also one of the things that custımer do not like.

Paco Underhill also describes Americans love and hatred towards mall in his book named “Call of the Moll”. According to him on one hand consumer seeks for to loathe homogeneity and rapid commercialism and on the other hand they want to return in the mall to shop, have meal and for entertainment and also even to just pass time. The malls are not an institution. Right now they become icon in American culture and emulated around world.

The necessities are the goods that consumers needs in their life when luxuries goods are the items that people can live without. According to Clinical Psychologist Dr Pauline Wallin; we want stuff because some other people have it. If we become depend on that good it becomes necessity. Today people mostly rely on machines and technology. The cell phones are to be the best example for this. When cell phones first came out, for most of the people it was luxury and there weren’t many uses for it. The more item penetrates the culture, the more applications it has and the more we rely on it.

According to a survey, which is made between 2000 adults, the necessities of Americans has increased during past years. The items once considered luxuries now has become the things people cannot live without. Microwaves, air conditioning, home computer are some of the items that the necessity has increased. The necessities also differs between men & women.

Regarding to another survey compared with three years ago for 69% of today’s consumer cloths with fashion brand is less important. Consumer consider fashion as a part of budgetary spend. And some more items become also important in consumers lifestyle like technology, entertainment , beauty, etc. So since the cost of living is increasing the necessities are become less approval brands. People want newness with their every shopping and it’s not only for a simply merchandise but consumers also wants to presentation of appeal. Showing consumers to combining of items, offering accessorize are the key things.

According to one other survey 1/3 of all consumers are involved in an impulse purchase. Good merchandise practices trigger buying. To understand the shopping behaviors the classification of customers can be useful. For example Wal Mart has classified its 200 million customers into 3 core groups.

Brand Aspirations: Customers that have low income and fixed on brand names.
Price-Sensitive Affluents: Wealthies shopper who love deals.
Value-Price Shoppers: Customers that prefer low prices and cannot afford much more.

Strategic shoppers defined as customers who are willing to buy full-price sometimes, but other times wait for a bargain. According to Wharton search, it’s these customers that retailers need to focus on in order to reap the full benefits of lean inventory management on pricing.
For example an apparel retailer Zara. When people go there and like some cloth. Instead of waiting for a discount, mostly they purchase the product. It’s because they know that if they wait the product will be out of stock soon and maybe they cannot find same later on.

There are also problematic customers, which they have many complaints on something. There have been even some callers 300 times to call services in a month. Some companies rather not to serve this kind of customers even though a high competition in the market.

Bilge Sevim
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