Case Study: Think of the comfort you find when you walk into the store - Community, signage and visual cues that keep the consumer occupied
Once the consumer is brought into the store they are immediately captured with what they see. So now we need to look into the details of how the producer claims to capture his audience and keep his audience. To do this I researched the growth of modern advertising. In the mid 19th century, the environment of the retail world changed rapidly. Boorstin details how new technologies transformed the urban landscape to produce "consumer places" (Boorstin, p.192). Innovations for the shopping experience grew into the idea of "window-shopping" (Boorstin, p.104). This technology helped transform the average shopping experience into a visual journey, one that draws in the consumer through what they can see and touch and feel more than anything. These new technologies began to gradually develop into much more by the late 1990's. The dawn of a grocery store becoming more than just a store was growing. This is the turning point when a store began was created to cultivate a spatially constructed community to draw the consumers in. By this I mean consumers would walk into a store not just to consume, but to experience a daily routine. Marketing now started with the consumer in mind. Once a store began to understand that visual signage could draw consumers in, they began to "place products in the spaces" (Rodriguez, p.5). The size of stores grew congruently because they wanted to give consumers more and more products to look as (and consequently buy). Thus growing stores to become mega-stores. By the early 2000's the invention of mega-stores created a community that surrounded the consumer when they walked into the store. This dawning of awareness created a climate that drew a whole new appeal to the grocery store. Consumers not only wanted to go to the grocery store to get food, they wanted to experience the store. Eat, buy clothes, see the store, experience the store.
Have you ever noticed that when you walk into a store a main focus within it are the "in-store signs which are clear, attractive, and which reinforce the store image?" (Rodriguez, p.5). Armata suggests that "in-store marketing is 'an invisible hand that leads customers through the store aisles and directs them to targeted products, strategically linking purchase decisions to the store's external advertising.'" (Armata, p.152). These signs gather the visual rhetoric and attract each consumer into it's realm. As Rose points out in the notion of reflexivity - "the reference points that draw a syntagmatic aspect [also] draw discourse"( Rose, p.196) throughout the store. Weather or not you intend to buy products, they are intentionally placed in your view to be seen, and they give the consumer means to reflect upon each new element introduced into their path. These "signs were conceived as a means to reinforce 'store-image'" (Rodriguez, p.10). This is how the consumer is kept to focus within the store. They lead the consumer through the store. The signage at the shelf, at the tops of the aisles, at the backs of the aisles, this technology is created to keep the consumer occupied.
Alongside the technology of keeping the consumer occupied with signs grew the idea of creating a community with which the consumer will spend its daily time. Store like Whole Foods have created an alternate reality around a consumers need to gather just food. Technologies like stations to taste the food, sites to touch the clothes, and places to relax with a cup of coffee become an extension of the shopping experience. Thus the consumer now has been brought on board into wanting more than just groceries. Their time-spent engaging with the store is a product of the visual rhetoric they receive when walking into the store. Marketing of new products, discourse through touching, feeling and smelling more than just what is on their original grocery list creates a greater need for their lives. Now as a consumer you want more than you need.