Effects Of Visual Merchandising On Consumer Behavior: A Study At Woolworths Limited, Essay.

Factors to consider in visual merchandising

Question:

Discuss about the Effects of Visual Merchandising in Woolworths.

Visual merchandising is a technology used by many business people to attract customers to buy their products or to use their services by just creating a good impression to them through that technology. This method of merchandising has been adopted by many companies so as to create an impression to many customers and hence increase profits.  The visual merchandising has a direct impact on the sales of goods and hence retailers who use this method have a high chance of selling their goods more than those who use other methods (Simondi et al. 2014).

This method dates back in 1900 when a company called marshall shifted its business from wholesale to retail (Riecken et al. 2016). After the shift from wholesale to retail, this company saw it necessary to display their products in a manner which could attract many customers. They put the display on the windows or on the wall outside the business sites to attract customers. From that time, many businesses attracted the method and hence started using it to promote their businesses. Due to the development of this method of creating awareness to customers, this study will focus on looking for the effects of the method either negative or positive. The study will be done at Woolworth’s limited company. It will be based on customers so as to get the best results and make good recommendations which are reliable.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of visual merchandising for products. The following are the other objectives of the study.

1. To evaluate the attitude of customers towards merchandising of products
2. To discuss the rate of growth of retails which use visual merchandising
3. To evaluate the role of visual merchandising in retails
4. To estimate customers who basically buy products due to merchandising

1. What is the effect of visual merchandising for products?
2. What is the attitude of customers towards merchandising of products?
3. What is the rate of growth of retails which use visual merchandising for their products?
4. What is the role of visual merchandising in retails?
5. What is the percentage of customers who basically buy products due to visual merchandising?

This study will be carried out at Woolworths limited. This company has been chosen because it is one of the leading retails in Australia and has also extended to New Zealand. Since this company is a leading company and covers greater geographical area in Australia, it will be the best company to base the study on since during data collection the researcher will encounter different customers from different parts of the world. The researcher will also be able to interact with the employees of the company hence know how they carry out visual merchandising so as to attract many customers. This will lay a foundation for further research and reliable recommendations.

Visual merchandising refers to anything which can be seen by the customers either inside a store or outside the store and which creates an impression about the products which are in the store (Valiulis et al. 2015).  The display affects the attitude of the customer either positively or negatively and it is the one which makes the customer make a decision whether to buy a given product or not to buy it.  One consumer can be affected negatively by a certain display while another can be affected positively by the same display hence it depends on the perspective of the customer towards the display.

Challenges of visual merchandising

There are many factors which should be considered while carrying out visual merchandising. The following discussion will summarize some of the factors to consider.

Colors

Colors are one of the main factors which should consider while carrying out visual merchandising. Different people have a different feeling towards different colors. One person can see red color as pleasant hence making him or her purchase a product which is advertised in that color. Another person can decline to buy the same product due to the color used to advertise it. There is a need for the retailers to carry out a research so as to know which colors attract customers more hence use them to carry out the display of the products so as to attract those many customers. The color also depends on the type of product which is being displayed and also its purpose and the targeted consumers.

Simplicity

The display should be kept simple and clear for the customers to see well. Dim displays make customers have negative impressions about the product (Kurmar and Mishra 2016). The retailers should make sure that the visual display is not dim and does not have pictures which create a bad impression about the product.

Grouping

The products to be displayed should be grouped in an organized manner. The retailers should not display items which are not related as they will not create a good impression to the consumers. The products should be shown and not talked about (Banol et al. 2016). Items which are similar should be put in the same place so as to show how they will look like if a customer purchases them.

Be specific

During the display, one should be specific and direct to the product and its benefits to the consumers (Shagal et al. 21016). The display should be designed in a way which shows both the benefit and the cost associated with the product. This helps in creating an impression to the customers since they are able to directly know how they will benefit from the product.

Tag price

The price of the product should be tagged on the product to make sure all the customers are able to see it. This will make them feel free to ask why it is sold at that price unlike when the customers need to be told the price. Price displayed is more appealing than the price which customers have to be told (Zentes et al. 2017).

Research gaps

Challenges of visual merchandising

The main challenge which is faced in visual merchandising is the main components of implementation. The following discussion will highlight some of those components and how they pose a challenge to the retailers.

Attention-grabbing displays are one of the components which pose a challenge to the retailers during visual merchandising. To come up with displays which attract the attention of the customers is not an easy task. This is because the display can be appealing to some customers and at the same time it can create a bad impression to another customer. This makes the decision of how to make the displays a great challenge.

Costs associated with the visual merchandising are another challenge for the process. The retailers can pay a lot of money for specialized people to come up with a good display which will attract people only to end up getting a display which does not impress the customers. Proper research should be done to make sure that the colors used for the display are appealing to the customers.

Priorities given to visual merchandising is also another challenge for retailers. They have many issues to deal with like how to maintain profits in their industries and how they can handle employees to get the best out of them. In that process, they end up forgetting visual merchandising which is very important in attracting customers hence the retails may not have significant growth. Retailers also don’t value the impact of visual merchandising hence the customers may not be able to know the products which are in the market. This may lead to low sales which will contribute to low profits.

Research gaps

There are many research gaps related to visual merchandising. The following discussion will highlight some of those gaps. The discussion will lay a base for areas which need further research.

Time allocation

Many scholars have suggested different times which should be spent on carrying out visual Merchandising. However, they don’t give out the reasons for the suggested time and hence there is need to carry out an extensive research which will outline the main reasons for different timelines.

Colors

Displays of visual merchandising create different impacts to different people. Researchers have commented that some colors may lead to customers failing to buy a certain product. However, there are no reasons why those colors create either positive impacts to certain people and create negative impacts to other people. Why do people love colors and they are just paints also remains unknown. The reasons why products which are associated with certain religion also remain un researched.     

Research methodology

Extensive research has not also been done regarding the effects of visual merchandising. The already existing research has only be based on the impressions which visual merchandising has towards customers but not the level of impacts either positive or negative towards the consumers. Proper research should be done to know the level and this research is based on all those gaps so as to give out recommendations which will make it more valid.

Research methodology is a well-defined procedure which is scientific based and uses statistical methods to carry out an investigation about a problem or a claim (Wiek and Lang 2016). The research design is a conceptual frame work within a research is conducted. It gives a blueprint for data collection and analysis. This section will explain how the study will be carried out.

This research will be a quantitative research. Quantitative research is an empirical process of investigation which is based on numerical data and is carried out using statistical methods (Mackey and Gass 2015). There are twelve parts of quantitative research. The following section will discuss the twelve sections.

The first step of quantitative research is the formulation of the research problem. In this step, the researcher comes up with the problem which he or she wants to do research on. The problem should be researchable and should be able for one to collect empirical data (Mc Millan and Schumarcher 2014).  The second step of this study is a formulation of the objectives of the study. The researcher comes up with objectives which will guide the research and should be met at the end of the study.  Those objectives should be in line with the literature review gaps and they also rhyme with the research questions and the topic under study (Neuman and Robson 2014). The next step is the scope of the project whereby the researcher gives out the specific area where the study will be carried on and give justification why he chose the specified area and not any other place.

The next step is literature review where the researcher reviews the already existing literature on the topic under study. This gives the researcher a solid background about the topic and also makes him or her be able to know the research gaps in the topic under study (Claydon 2015). The next step is research methodology where the researcher comes up with the formula which will be used to carry out the study. The research methodology should be scientific and should use statistical and mathematical methods.

The next step is whereby the researcher explains the kind of the research he or she will carry out. There are two types of study either quantitative or qualitative. The researcher explains the type of research and why he or she will carry out that type of research. The next step is the method of data collection where the researcher explains the kind of data he or she will collect based on the type of the study (Yegidis et al. 2017). There follows the step of data analysis.  In this step the researcher transforms the collected data into information. The next step is the step of communicating the findings of the research whereby the researcher gives out the details of the research findings after data analysis. The last step, is the step of recommendation whereby the researcher makes recommendations based on the analyzed data.

This research will be carried on Woolworths limited. The researcher will seek permission from the administration to carry out the study. The target population will be the customers who will be coming to the retail. The researcher will give a designed questionnaire for them to fill.

The researcher will not use any sampling method to select the sample size of the study. This is because customers do not come at the retail all at once hence it will be hard to use sampling procedures. However, the researcher will collect data from 300 consumers who will be coming to the retail for a period of one week. The participants will be given a questionnaire to fill and once the sample size is reached the researcher will stop the process of data collection.

 Questionnaires will be the main tool for data collection. A questionnaire is well-structured document which contains questions about a given topic under study and whose main work is to collect data for that specified topic (Barnham 2015). There are many advantages associated with using questioners for data collection. One of the advantages is that it saves time as many participants can fill it at once hence saving time. Also, questioners have specific questions which are directly related to the topic under study hence the data collected is reliable and not biased. Due to these advantages, the researcher has decided to use questionnaires as the main tool for data collection.

This research has some limitations associated with it. One of the main limitations of this study that the customers may not be willing to participate hence some important data may be left out. Also, the time to carry out the study very limited hence the researcher may not have humble time to comprehensively carry out the study.  The study will only access impacts visual merchandising and will not discuss how different retails have solved some challenges concerning the visual merchandising hence it is limited in scope.

This study will be carried out for a period of two months. the following table will summarize the time schedule of the study.

Conclusion

This research will be focus on the impacts of visual merchandising. The discussion of the attitudes of customers based on the level of visual merchandising will also be discussed. This will lay a base for other researchers to know how they should carry out the process of visual merchandising. Also, the growth rate of retails which use visual merchandising will be discussed to evaluate if they have a high growth rate than those who don’t use or it is vice versa. This will give other retails to make a decision on whether to use the method or not to use. The role of visual merchandising will also be discussed so as to make sure all the retails have a solid background about the method.  This discussion will create insights on the and hence lead good decisions of those people who use this method as a way of attracting customers.  It will also give out recommendations of what should be done to improve the level of visual merchandising.

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