Retail Psychology - The Power of Eyes

As the disposable income is going down and customers are becoming savvier with their spending, brands need to reach for new tools to get people’s attention. Have you ever thought how you are using EYES?

Yes, I am talking about actual eye contact, gaze direction or even the eyes of your brand mascots. It might seem like such an unimportant design detail, but it has a tremendous impact on willingness to purchase, product valuations, customer satisfaction, brand perception and even charitable giving.

Whether it is packaging, digital or OOH advertising, social media images and videos, ecommerce images or even other subtle design details in both your physical retail environments and your ecommerce pages, using eyes can have incredible positive impact on your brand.

We are wired to be social animals. Our survival is dependent on the strength of many not the power of one. We often look to others to reduce the cognitive load of decision making by getting a social approval. It’s kind of like a short cut – if others like it, it has to be safe, good and, more importantly, socially desirable, therefore increasing the chance for higher social acceptance if I buy this product. We know this herd mentality very well as we follow the crowd, join the queues, but we also follow people’s eye gaze. When food products are looked at by others, our preference and willingness to pay more for them increases, while if they are ignored by others, it decreases. Even when models in advertising look towards the advertised product, the intention to purchase that product increases as well as attention to and memory of the ad plus brand evaluation all improve.

Should models in ecommerce imagery look at the customer or not? Well, as my favourite answer to every question goes, it depends. Your brand, your product, your customer, your price level and more will dictate what will work best. However, various studies have indicated that eye contact between the model and the customer can be beneficial. In one study testing American and Chines customers the researchers were able to link higher arousal with ecommerce models that are smiling and look at the customer. Higher arousal is a sign of intensive emotions which numerous behavioural research have linked with higher memorability, increased willingness to purchase, higher product valuations and overall satisfaction.

Many brands are now using anthropomorphised characters like brand mascots. They are a great way to give a more human feeling to your brand, increase feelings of intimacy and love towards the brand and even enhance brand trust, which in times of socioeconomic uncertainty is a must for survival. Some of the brands that have been using these characters the longest are children’s cereals. Interestingly, the gaze direction of these mascots within product packaging design is also influential. One study looked at the shelf position of the children’s cereal and whether the characters made an eye contact with the children and found that those that did benefited from higher trust and connection with the brand as well as their products being chosen over their competitors. So, not only you need a brand mascot, but your packaging design should be juxtaposed against your shelf position and an average height of the children in your target audience. Like normal packaging design wasn’t complex enough!

It’s not only adverts, packaging and imagery that counts. In moderately crowded and brightly lit environments people are more socially conforming including buying more trend-based products and of course stealing less. Yet what happens when there are not enough people to make you feel like you’re being watched? Well, this is when putting a picture of someone’s eyes, an anthropomorphised character ‘looking at you’ or even art that uses eyes become especially great tools. A study using images of eyes on charitable donation boxes in supermarkets shown that customers donated 48% more to those boxes versus ones with more generic images and this effect was stronger when supermarkets were less busy.

What is especially important across all of these studies is that customers have absolutely no awareness of such effect of the eyes on their behaviour, emotions and decision making. This is just one of the stimuli, out of millions, that affect human brain every second. I love the power of these tinniest of details on human behaviour. Whether that’s branding, retail design, packaging or even experiential design, never underestimate the impact that the seemingly unimportant elements can have on your brand’s success. If you are working on repositioning and redesigning your brand, a new retail concept or another design project and want to take advantage of this huge power of the tinniest aspects of your brand universe, talk to us and we will help you apply these and many other behavioural strategies. ?