Did you know that the type of floor a customer is standing on can affect their experience and how they evaluate the product?
It might seem odd but it is true and it is part of the science related to our sense of bodily sensations and our sense of distance.
Scientists have looked at the interaction between the bodily sensations coming from the floor surface and the distance someone has to a product when evaluating it.
It is common sense that we feel more comfortable on a soft carpet and perhaps more rigid on a harder vinyl floor.
But interestingly, when customers are standing on a soft carpet and are far away from the product, they rate it as more comforting. But when they are standing close to the product, it is the hard vinyl floor that makes the product appear more comforting.
Such cross-influence of various sensory stimuli on each other which can reverse, cancel out or augment particular effects is typical. This is why planning store design is not something that can happen sense by sense. We need to look at a complex multisensory universe to ensure that sounds support textures and tastes, that colours don’t clash with smells and so on.
Does your store’s multisensory universe create desired effects?
Author: Alice Micheletti