When I visited London in January, I didn’t really have any opinion about M+M’s. I knew I liked them and that they were nice chocolates but I was impartial. After visiting M+M world in Trafalgar square, I developed a new found love for the brand and for the clever techniques that they had used to create an in store experience unlike any other I had seen previously or seen since….
The above diagram is taken from (Turley & Milliman, 2000) which looks at the instore environment and how it influences buyer behaviour. In my opinion, M+M world takes most of the factors into consideration. This post will discuss some of those factors and try to understand why they work and how M+M world is such a clever store.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PODEw64vy1A
One thing that is clear from the video is the noise. Inside the store is loud and in your face both visually and and The store blasts out popular music which creates a lively and vibrant atmosphere and can increase the customers attention to products and the environment (Yalch & Spangenberg, 2000). This increases the sales within the store as consumers will have higher levels of arousal due to the crazy environment.
The colours within the store are SO bright it certainly wakes you up when you enter the store (which I happened to visit at about 10 o’clock at night), but the lighting and fluorescent tubing around the store pulled me in. It turns out that colours within a store also have an effect upon emotions and purchasing decisions. Due to the cultural association that people have between colour and various meanings, different colours can convey different messages. Since M+M world has a rainbow of colours inside, it can target lots of different messages and thus lots of different people, meaning that they can form an emotional connection with every customer. Through the emotional connection, it is likely that customers will pay for the overpriced memorabilia (which is actually really cool but just really expensive…..especially to a student).
Now, what else can M+M add to the environment which can’t be seen?…..The smell of chocolate of course. Personally, I did not appreciate the random bursts of chocolate scent as I was wandering around the store, mainly because it was clearly the manufactured smell, but also because I’d just finished my consumer psychology 3rd year module and knew it was a ploy to get me buying things. Cleverly, M+M was playing on the fact that smells can elicit emotional responses and the smell of chocolate has even been shown to cause an increase in dopamine levels which can elicit a positive affect which can have an impact upon purchasing behaviour. The smell of the chocolate causes both an emotional and behavioural change which shows the power that the atmosphere holds upon consumers. For the scent to work within a store, it needs to match the environment and of course, M+M chose the smell chocolate which matches the product (Chebat & Michon, 2003).
One thing that I found annoying about the store was the staff. I personally don’t appreciate the overfriendliness and being asked a million times whether I needed any help. However, their energy did inject fun into the store and as the video shows, they do help the store to come to life and create a magical world of excitement and happiness. As I entered the store, I was handed a shopping bag, a present from them to me, but I knew that it was just another ploy to get me to buy more products. The reciprocity theory states that we are more likely to do something else for someone, if they have done something for us. So, in a retail environment, if we are given a basket, it makes us more likely to make more purchases, research suggests that it can make us buy significantly more products (Wu et al, 2010). Simple idea yet highly effective at increasing revenue.
Overall, I feel that if you are interested in the atmosphere in a retail environment, M+M world is a perfect example (Class trip anyone?). It really is one of the most interesting stores I’ve been to, from both a Consumer Psychology and a personal perspective and if you get the chance I’d highly recommend it.
Consumer Confessions 