There
are times in the year you probably spend more
time shopping than usual. Yes or no?
Do
you stick to your
budget and only purchase items you planned to
buy?
If your answer is otherwise, don't feel too bad - research shows that more
than 50% of consumer
spending is unplanned.
Retail
spaces are designed for impulse shopping. When you go to a retail outlet looking
for a tie and come out with a new shirt as well, it’s not just your fault. Retail stores are trying to look so beautiful, so welcoming, the items
so enticingly displayed and in such vast quantity, that the consumer will start
picking compulsively.
This phenomenon
is called the Gruen Effect, named after Victor Gruen, born in Vienna
in 1904. Gruen left Austria in 1938 for New York City. He then toured around
America to understand people’s behaviour, their buying and socialising patterns.
Gruen subsequently came up with his grand vision. Gruen imagined a
miniature “city under a roof”, fully enclosed from the outside world, but
covered in natural skylight and with climate-controlled environments. He was aiming for a lively plaza with statues, fountains,
greenery, shops and restaurants. He imagined that the visitors would spend time communicating with one another, strolling around and marvelling at the colourful window displays.
Gruen
wanted his structure as an architectural panacea that would solve the environmental, commercial, and sociological problems of America under a single building.
This concept later came to be known as the “third place”. The “third place” term was coined by Ray Oldenburg, in his 1989 urban planning classic, The Great Good Place. The main idea was that the normal social environments
for people are home (“first place”) and the office (“second place”). “Third
places” are those spaces that are public and allow people to interact with one
another along with a host of other activities.
Gruen
thus presented his solution for America: The Shopping Mall.
In 1952 – Dayton company commissioned Victor Gruen to build the
first indoor, climate controlled shopping mall at Southdale
Center, in Edina
Minnesota.
In 1956 – Southdale
Center had its Grand opening.
1960s onwards – Shopping malls became very popular all over America and in
many cases the only air-conditioned place in town.
And
slowly, the mall culture became popular across the world.
However, Gruen had later admitted that malls never became community-enriching spaces as he had originally envisioned, but the malls did make people buy lots and lots of
stuff.
Gruen’s
discussions of shopping towns were based on a distinction he makes between "shopping" and "buying". According to Gruen’s
definitions, buying is a result of a predetermined and exactly defined aim,
while shopping is usually approached with a generous supply of free time, a
flexible amount of funds and a certain aimlessness. Shopping involves the
comparing of price, style, and quality, and while shoppers may have a shopping
list, they welcome inspiration for unplanned purchases, perhaps not really
needed. This transfer from a task-oriented buying to less focused shopping
experience is the "Gruen effect".
Large
retailers devote huge amounts of time and resources to exploiting this
psychological principle, So, if you are a shopper, having a little knowledge of this concept can help you control your impulse spending. And if you're a small retail
business owner, implementing this idea will help you sell more stuff.
Victor Gruen died in 1980, but the idea of
Gruen effect is still alive.
In
the 21st century, The rise of online shopping has heavily disrupted the retail
industry. Amazon
now dominates consumer spending in the US. Between 2010 and 2016, sales on the
giant online marketplace rose from $16 billion to $80 billion.
Today, as consumers increasingly buy digitally the shopping
websites have adopted the Gruen Effect online. If log onto Amazon to buy a particular book, and then you end up clicking one or many of the countless products on its endless
pages. Welcome to the Gruen Effect!
In
this empirical historical overview, I have analysed the customer experience in
shopping through the concept of Gruen effect, the history of mall development
and how the same principles are being applied in modern day Online shopping.
Sources
for this research include journal on “Malls and
the Orchestration of the Shopping Experience in a Historical Perspective” by
Fabian Csaba & Sren as published by the Association of Consumer Research,
Journal called “Mall Maker” by the University of Pennsylvania press, article by
Malcom Gladwell as published in The New Yorker.
Happy
shopping!
