Each time I visit a supermarket I marvel at the way the aisles are arranged.
Usually I end up walking around the store for a lot longer than I intend to in order to find (let's say) that particular bottle of mustard because there is now way of knowing whether it is displayed together with the steak sauces and salad dressings or with the "International Flavors" items.
The problem is even worse if I'm at a supermarket that I'm not familiar with. As though they have signed a secret international agreement to confuse the heck out of their customers, most supermarkets have almost opposite floor plans.
If at your familiar local supermarket, for example, you were walking into the bakery section when you entered from the main door and turned right, you can be 100% sure that there will be no bakery, but perhaps a produce section, or a florist, at your next supermarket.
The point is not that all items should have fixed locations in all supermarkets. Not at all.
My point is, I'm not sure if all that endless walking among the long aisles -- always laid out in parallel rows - is necessary at all. I'm not sure if that's the smartest way to design a supermarket assuming, of course, that customer satisfaction and "user friendliness" is what matters most for any corporation.
So here I propose an alternative floor plan that I've never seen in any of the supermarkets that I've visited: CONCENTRIC CIRCLES.
Imagine you are looking at a number of concentric circles like the ones on a dart board, connected at 90 degree angles with perpendicular access corridors. The whole floor plan when looked at from above should look exactly like a shooting target superimposed with a plus "+" sign on top.
The customers should Enter the supermarket from one side of the concentric circles. The cash registers and the Exit should be lined up on an arc on the other side.
When you stand at the CENTER of these concentric circles all aisles would be at an equal distance and that should really cut down on the amount of safari excursions you make to find your items. The cross-cutting access channels should make it much easier to walk from one end of the supermarket to the other, in less time.
Add to this floor plan the hi-tech help of VOICE RECOGNITION DIRECTORY TERMINALS, placed in the CENTER of the store...
You can speak into such terminals and ask for the item you are looking for. Then the VRDT (what's a human mind if not for creating acronyms?) talks back with the precise location of what you are looking for: "French Mustard, Aisle C-4. Thank you!"
I suppose the same floor plan can be applied successfully to other types of stores as well.
I'm also aware that forcing the customers walk aimlessly among the aisles is a conscious strategy to make them buy things on an impulse and thus maximize profits.
But in economic theory there is the law called the "Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns." As the supermarkets get larger and larger, and as the busy customers have less and less time to walk needlessly around a supermarket, I think it makes more corporate sense to create a pleasant shopping experience through better designed floor plans. Ultimately customer satisfaction is where the true profits are.
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