Great Location - Rule Lx5
Stop. Look. See. Decide to go in.
As an owners and lessees of retail space, those are the 4 steps you want potential customers to take. The ubiquitous traffic light plays an important role in influencing the retail decision making process. How many times have you been stopped at a traffic light and felt a tad frustrated? As you curse yourself for taking that particular route home, to work or from your child's soccer practice, you exhale and peer out the window. It is only at that moment, because you were forced to stop, that you notice that the vacant space next to the corner gas station is now a bustling wood-fired pizza place!
The next thing you know, you're ordering a prosciutto, arugula, fig jam and ricotta pizza and a bottle of sangiovese a few weeks later. Traffic signals create hundreds if not thousands of opportunities for people to recognize a retail location everyday. The presence of a traffic signal can make a location great by reducing traffic speeds, creating safer turn-ins, allowing for pedestrian crossing and granting opportunities for business exposure and easier parking.
Robb, great insight and so true. Consumer behaviors are more impulsive than we realize and retailers leverage those impulses when we can. ....Although I would have ordered a Red Zinfandel instead.