Nowadays, competition in KA stores is becoming increasingly fierce. To increase sales in a superstore, the first thing to do is to make customers 'see' your product among tens of thousands of items, then 'attract' them, 'stimulate' their purchase desire, and leave a deep 'impression'. When it comes to this, many companies only have old methods like 'occupying end caps, building floor displays, and hiring promoters'. But with the rising costs of store space and labor, these old methods are becoming more and more expensive. In fact, a sales environment that is easy to see, easy to choose, easy to buy, and easy to remember is the KA Visual Merchandising System (KA VMS). Many companies narrowly interpret visual merchandising as product display and store image design, or even as the work of display staff and graphic designers. In fact, visual merchandising is the overall performance of the sales environment and store based on products. KA VMS includes three major elements: product packaging, product display, and in-store POP (point of purchase), as well as broader elements such as in-store multimedia advertising, promoters, and even outdoor advertising and TV advertising. It is becoming an important competitive force in KA sales. The following will mainly introduce the three major elements of KA VMS and their specific applications. First Element: Product Packaging Among all flat media of a product, packaging is the medium that has the closest contact with consumers and the lowest communication cost. Some people think that packaging is the outer garment of a product, and a good product with a beautiful outer garment can sell better. Therefore, design only pursues 'good looks'. However, beauty is subjective; neither the marketing director nor the company boss can represent the aesthetic of the target consumers. In fact, the most important thing about packaging is to systematically consider the information and priorities that the product and brand itself need to convey. Case 1: Red Mineral Water French BADOIT mineral water is a brand with a long history, but over time, its glorious history and unchanging packaging and advertising have become synonymous with 'outdated'. As a veteran star of French mineral water, how to break through in the fierce store competition? The red packaging launched in 2004 finally ignited the breakthrough battle. Mineral water usually aims to give people a feeling of 'pure, natural, sweet', and red is definitely the opposite. Cleverly, this new product features high carbonation, making the red packaging not only not abrupt but very appropriate (see Figure 1). This case introduces another secret of KA VMS packaging design: color marketing. The US marketing community has summarized the '7-second rule', which states that consumers decide whether to buy within 7 seconds. The first impression a product leaves on consumers may trigger their interest, and in these short 7 seconds, color accounts for 67% of the influence! BADOIT's successful breakthrough used the impact of color on customer purchase behavior, creating a 'focus of attention' through strong contrast on the shelf, and cleverly highlighting the product's unique features, thus achieving success. Case 2: Points, Lines, and Planes on the Shelf In stores, when products are repeatedly displayed in a concentrated manner on shelves, sales are usually better. Because the 'plane' formed by repeated displays is easier to see. Therefore, packaging is not isolated but a 'point' on the shelf display plane. If you sell 20 different products of the same category in a store, you need to consider what kind of 'plane' the 'points' represented by the packaging of these 20 products form. If their packaging designs are each independent, the formed plane will inevitably be messy, losing the opportunity to be 'seen'. This is like billboards along highways; billboards with only a few large characters of the brand name often have higher recognition and memory than those with complex content and trivial appeals. If there are further subdivisions in the series, colors or graphics can be used to distinguish them, so that the packaging of subcategories forms a 'line', and the resulting plane has more rhythm and visual tension. For example, Minute Maid's Pulpy Milky presents such a plane (see Figure 3). The points, lines, and planes of packaging design are easy to say, but in practice, they must be considered from the planning stage of the product series. Remember, packaging is first for display effect. In fact, visual merchandising originated from the Western food industry's attempt to 'improve the self-selling ability of self-service shelves', showing the importance of shelf display in KA VMS. Shelf display is like painting on the shelf with packaging as elements, according to sales needs. Therefore, if packaging is not done well, no matter how good the display is, the expressiveness is limited; and when carrying out packaging design, knowledge of shelf display must be mastered to serve the final effect. Second Element: Shelf Display Display by Classification Logic The first concern of display is how to make it easy for customers to understand the product, and then aesthetics. Therefore, the logic of product display should be clarified first. Here are several common classification logics:

  1. By category: According to the function and nature of the product, for example, chocolate is displayed by dark chocolate, milk chocolate, nut chocolate, etc. The higher the correlation between different categories, the closer they should be placed;
  2. By price: According to the level and price of the product, for example, when the same brand has high-end, mid-range, and value options in the same category, they can be displayed from top to bottom, or horizontally from high to low price according to the main traffic direction;
  3. By size: When the same category has different capacities or sizes, display from small to large, from top to bottom, for example, mineral water: 600ml on top, 1.5L and 2L below in order;
  4. By sales intent: According to the sales importance of the product, for example, the apparel industry often places the season's main push or clearance items at the front of the shelf;
  5. Integrated display: As products and sales become more complex, integrating the above four classification logics is a more effective method. For example, the overall display follows category logic, while incorporating sales intent to adjust the display positions of different categories, ensuring clear classification while being more conducive to sales. The logic of display should be based more on consumers' shopping habits, not dogma or the company's own words. At the same time, when displaying according to a certain logic, try to follow a unified direction, such as from top to bottom or from left to right, to avoid alternating vertical and horizontal, which interferes with customers' judgment of the display logic. Vertical Display Principle Modern supermarkets emphasize shopping efficiency, and the vertical display principle is a magic weapon to improve shopping efficiency and comfort. Applying this magic weapon is simple: display products of the same subcategory from top to bottom, not from left to right. Why does this improve shopping efficiency? For example, if there are 20 SKUs in the same subcategory, each 20cm wide and 25cm high; using horizontal display from left to right, a customer would need to walk 4 meters to browse all these items. If he finds that this subcategory does not have what he wants, he has to walk another 4 meters to browse another subcategory. But with vertical display, assuming a general high shelf of 2 meters, 20 products can be placed in 5 rows of 4 products each, which is more than enough. This way, customers can judge whether there is a needed product within an 80cm wide range, and if not, they don't have to walk back and forth to find it. This is the beauty of vertical display. More importantly, vertical display provides the possibility for product 'visibility' and brand effect maximization. First, if horizontal display is used, when there are few SKUs and subcategories, it cannot form a 'plane' but only a 'line'. The visual tension brought by a 'line' is far less than that of a 'plane', which undoubtedly reduces the product's visibility and brand impression. Second, horizontal display means that once your product is placed at the top or bottom of the shelf, it basically loses sales opportunities, and for new brands entering the market, this possibility is high. Therefore, vertical display is also a magic weapon for new brands to strive for fair sales opportunities. Clever Use of the Visual Golden Zone On the basis of vertical display, we need to further consider how to use the visual golden zone on the shelf. What is the shelf visual golden zone? This starts with the ergonomics of the eyes. The area that the eyes can see clearly when looking straight ahead is limited, so when a person faces the shelf, the effective visual area from top to bottom is the space 80-160cm from the ground, which is the shelf visual golden zone. The attention given to areas below or above the golden zone is generally only one-fifth of that of the golden zone, so the sales performance of the golden zone and its driving effect on the entire vertical plane determine the output of a shelf. How to make good use of the visual golden zone? The author believes that the display method of the French sports supermarket Decathlon is worth learning from.
  6. In vertical display, Decathlon tries to display the complete SKUs of the category in the visual golden zone, while above and below the golden zone mainly do repeated displays. This way, customers can fully grasp the products on the shelf without bending down.
  7. In the visual golden zone, customers are also easily attracted by special displays and stop. For example, on shoe shelves, the original display brackets are uniform from top to bottom, with each pair of shoes facing the customer. But in the visual golden zone, there is a row of special platforms on which the same shoes as above and below are placed, but here the display shows the side and sole of the product, so that customers can 'read' these products more comprehensively. Next to this special display, there is often a comparison chart of the performance of different products in this large category, allowing customers to understand the products on the shelf in a shorter time and more easily when passing by, thus improving purchase efficiency.
  8. The first section of each row of shelves is always used to display the most representative and cost-effective 'blue products' of that row, so that customers can quickly judge whether to browse the entire row, and also because the high cost-effectiveness of blue products attracts them to stop and enter the aisle. Decathlon's clever use of the golden zone allows ordinary customers to shop happily and self-service in this relatively professional sports goods supermarket. A pleasant shopping environment also plays a very important role in the supermarket's sales performance and the accumulation of effective customers. Third Element: In-Store POP In-store POP is an indispensable element of KA VMS, with various forms of expression; all facilities in the mall can be used. For example, header boards, side panels, price tag insert cards, display experience boards, shelf light boxes, floor stickers, escalator stickers, checkout counter stickers, floor display, promotion tables, etc. The functions of in-store POP can be summarized into three:
  9. Improve product visibility: Decorated shelves are definitely more eye-catching at the terminal. Excellent POP design can better set off the product display, achieving a 1+1>2 effect, successfully holding consumers at the terminal!
  10. Reduce customer understanding cost, provide guidance and help for self-service shopping: For example, the Decathlon case mentioned earlier helps consumers choose suitable products through functional comparison of similar products. Another example is B&Q's comparison of the internal components of good and bad sockets, making quality and price clear at a glance.
  11. Strengthen brand impression, let consumers remember your brand: For example, Philips desk lamps in supermarkets are displayed with blue backboards and header boards, each lamp is placed on a base with a white background and blue logo, and blue brand hang tags are hung on the lamp arms. You can see the brand's representative blue from afar, and even if you don't buy a lamp, you more or less deepen your impression of Philips. (Figure 4) The following three misunderstandings should be avoided in the application of in-store POP: Misunderstanding 1: Each speaks for itself Some companies treat POP as shelf packaging, thinking that as long as it looks good and attracts attention, it's OK, without considering the relationship with the product, packaging, and sales. For example, if the packaging expresses freshness and nature, but the POP is bright red and purple, this unreasonable visual logic will greatly undermine the role of visual merchandising, undermining each other, and making it impossible for customers to accurately understand and remember your brand. A better method is to extend POP design from packaging design, focusing on one or two most important information points, thus forming a visual synergy. Misunderstanding 2: Overpowering the main guest When planning POP, pay attention to the fact that the product itself is the protagonist; POP is to create a sales atmosphere to better set off the product, and avoid overpowering the main guest. This is common in clothing stores; some stores are decorated like Christmas trees, with various ornaments, while the clothes for sale feel like a foil. In supermarkets, when doing promotional floor displays, pay attention to avoid this, because POP that overpowers the main guest often costs a lot. Misunderstanding 3: High cost and difficult to maintain Supermarket terminals have huge traffic, and POP damage is hard to avoid. Even if there are promoters for daily maintenance, cost and durability must be considered. This sounds unrelated to visual merchandising, but if the materials and craftsmanship are not chosen correctly, terminal POP will become a 'flash in the pan', quickly damaged and faded, affecting sales and brand image. Link: Three Principles of Visual Merchandising Visual merchandising can be seen as a series of marketing activities and operational methods, but it should also be a corporate strategy. Vision is the surface, and marketing thought is the soul hidden behind. When formulating a visual merchandising strategy, the following three principles should be followed: Principle 1: Consistency This emphasizes the consistency of marketing content and visual communication. This is first based on a clear marketing strategy, just like writing an essay first establishes the central idea. All elements of visual merchandising revolve around the central idea of product marketing. Marketing strategy is not isolated but runs through the entire process of product development, production, and sales. In the past, supply chain and sales were often disconnected: supply chain developed products based on production conditions, and sales sold whatever was available. The marketing department made packaging according to supply chain requirements, and then made advertisements according to sales requirements. The result was that terminal elements were each independent, even contradictory, giving an impression of being unprofessional and unreliable. Before launching a new product, P&G first establishes the marketing strategy based on consumer research, then completes packaging design around that strategy, customizes display effects, terminal POP, and other visual merchandising plans and product policies for different levels of KA stores, and finally fully trains sales personnel. It is the high planning and strong execution of the marketing strategy that ensures the terminal effect of its products has high consistency. Second, it is effective control of visual expression. For example, if a product like Clean & Clear, which targets young consumers for acne treatment, uses packaging like SKII's dark red, young consumers might think it's for their mothers' generation. This is visual expression violating the marketing strategy. Therefore, first thoroughly understand the marketing strategy, then fully understand the preferences and aesthetic tendencies of target consumers, and measure the consistency of visual expression based on both. It is worth mentioning that controlling visual expression does not necessarily require professional designers; as long as you look from the consumer's perspective objectively and even slightly critically, it can work. Principle 2: Readability Readability includes both easy understanding and easy memory. Practicing this principle mainly through 'subtraction' and 'fool's theory'. Some brands want to write all the product features on the packaging, and when making a poster, they fill in as much content as possible. They don't know that modern consumers have no time or patience to read carefully; the more you say, the less people look. Saying everything is equivalent to saying nothing. I suggest doing more subtraction, refining layer by layer to find the core marketing point, and highlighting it will make visual merchandising easier to understand and remember. The 'fool's theory' advocates treating target consumers as fools, reducing their understanding cost as much as possible. If it can be clear at a glance, don't beat around the bush; if it can be expressed with images, don't write long texts. Principle 3: Continuity If you pay attention to L'Oréal Paris advertisements, you will find that no matter what product it is, at the end of the ad, the heroine always says with confidence, 'Because you're worth it.' These seemingly repetitive details are the concrete manifestation of continuity in visual merchandising. In an era of information overload, repeating the same voice over and over again makes it more likely for people to remember deeply. Continuous visual expression is also a good way to help new brands quickly establish brand impression. For example, Dove chocolate, whether in packaging design, shelf decoration, terminal POP, or TV ads, continues the visual expression of silk and smoothness, forming and strengthening a continuous visual merchandising chain, making people think of Dove and think of silky smoothness. Visual merchandising is a marketing discipline that emerged as consumer demand developed from basic survival to spiritual levels in modern commerce, aiming to promote sales by enhancing customers' visual experience. As product competition becomes increasingly fierce, visual merchandising will be the new core competitiveness of KA marketing. 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