Supermarkets of the 21st century should be smart and easy to navigate, believes the creative consultancy firm Culdesac. To present its new approach to shopping, it has designed a store that focuses on ease of use, rather than volume of buying.
A new grocery store layout that focuses on making shopping easier for the consumer was presented in the Spanish supermarket chain Consum. The simple, stripped-down interior now helps shoppers to navigate the store with ease.
The modern shopping shouldn’t waste your time, so, there is a science to designing a grocery store layout. Nowadays, designers use psychology, behavioural science, lighting design, stage design, colour theory and more to induce us to buy more than we planned.
No need to underestimate the sensory impact of the scents, textures and colours makes us feel both energised and hungry. At the same time, a layout of the products become a puzzle.
In Spain, creative consultancy Culdesac has designed a store that focuses on ease of use, rather than volume of buying. The new supermarket uses stripped-back interiors to provide a clear hierarchy that helps shoppers understand the distribution and location of the sections and corridors.
The layout and height of the furniture have been redesigned to give shoppers optimal distance and reach. Colours also play an important role in the design, with pictograms and colour codes helping shoppers find what they want quickly.
Borja Berna, Culdesac senior creative architect, is proud of the result in Consum supermarket. Shoppers feel more comfortable in the grocery because the refreshed design was about figuring out which kind of elements were disturbing and deleting them, making only elements that were going to help shoppers.
“Colours, signage, lights and communication had to create a happy visit to the store and, at the same time, create the brand image,” Berna said and added that the design will eventually be rolled out across all of Consum’s 680 Spanish supermarkets.
Redesigned grocery stores may increase customer spend
The new design may actually increase customer spend, by making customers happier to be in the store. If successful, a cleaner, warmer, more well-organised space may be on the agenda for a wide range of stores.
In fact, much recent innovation in grocery stores has focused on improving elements of the shopping experience, such as virtual baskets, self-checkouts and waste-free packaging. The Culdesac design, in contrast, focuses on improving the store itself.
Actually, the idea of ‘modernizing’ stores is genial. It is time to make stores easier to navigate contrasts with traditional grocery store layouts, which are designed to keep people in the store for longer.
