A Crash Course on Creativity by Venture Lab

1. Assignment #2:
Paying attention in food stores
by Anna Pichugina
Venture Lab/ “A Crash Course on Creativity”
by Professor Tina Seelig, Stanford University

2. Dear all,
Remember what we had to do
for Assignment 1?
Find what we all have in
common.
Well, I can tell you one thing
we definitely share…

3. We get hungry! Every day.
And we need food.
Lots of food to nurture our
creative brains!
This week I decided to visit all the food stores around my house and - yes -
pay attention.
I work in advertising, so I know most “dirty secrets” modern supermarkets
use, like “put complimentary products together”, “give the customers bigger
baskets”, “put the most important products on the right side” etc. I find these
“findings” too obvious and will try to not to focus on them in my presentation.
Also, I have to admit I hate doing grocery shopping, so let’s see which store
will make me stay inside and spend more money, instead of just take]ing
what I need (or buy nothing at all) and running away.
Come with me!

4. Here’s where I live.
А is for Anna 
This is my house.
M is for subway station
1 – “Seventh Continent”
supermarket
2 – “Magnolia” supermarket
3 and 4 – “Pyaterochka”
supermarkets
5 – 24/7 small grocery store
6 – “Billa” supermarket
7 – Noname groceries
The area lies almost in the city center, next to 3 train stations and several
large business centers. Considering that, I’m lucky to have several groceries
within walking distance.

5. Seventh Continent
Type: Russian retail chain focused on quality products
of mid/high price range.
Time of visit: 8-30 pm, weekday
The supermarket’s located in the middle of a quiet
street and is surrounded by several business centers
and apartment block houses. The blue building with a
yellow sign on top is easy to notice and hard to mix up
with a competitor’s store. The supermarket has a small
parking lot where some of the local inhabitants and
office workers park their cars.
At the entrance, you’re “greeted” with a lightbox
promoting Felix catfood that you can purchase inside
and automatic glass sliding doors.

6. Seventh Continent
The territory isn’t large, but you don’t feel any lack of
space as you walk in and take a basket.
Everything about the surroundings is neutral – from
floor&shelf colors to electric lighting and background
sounds. The staff are always friendly and polite. The
prices are easy to find, items on sale have special
price tags.
To get to the basic products, like bread or fruit, you
have to walk through the whole shop, but nothing
actually distracts you on the way, so there’s no
“labyrinth”.
Lots of product categories are located in the side aisles
that always stay on your left side and as a result you
barely notice them.

7. Seventh Continent
The one interesting thing I’ve noticed about this supermarket is that it
gets more stuffed with POS materials and branded zones the further
you are from the entrance. Looks a little bit too messy for a “quality”
or even “high end” shop Seventh Continent is trying to be.

8. Seventh Continent
Overall experience: neutral/positive. I’ve found
nothing potentially irritating and will gladly come back
to this supermarket, but I won’t stay here long. Nothing
grabs my attention. At all.
Personal customer satisfaction:

9. Magnolia
Type: Russian retail chain, mid-price range
Time of visit: 9-30 pm, weekday
Magnolia is just 3 min. walk away from Seventh Continent.
Although the sign is rather large, the lighting isn’t strong enough:
because of the trees, the it is not well visible from the other side of the
street. You can easily walk past it.
Observation: the “24 hours” sign is brighter than the store’s name.

10. Magnolia
• The price level is pretty much the same as in Seventh
Continent, but the product choice is very narrow. As a
result, the customer flow is much lower.
• Most customers are locals who come here to get some basic
products for a simple meal, but nobody’s doing any serious
shopping in the store. Also, all the office workers from
surrounding business centers seem to prefer Seventh
Continent.
• There’s not much staff in the store. The woman who’s
supposed to be serving customers in the meat&cheese dept.
is often missing. The workers at the cash desks (1 or 2) are
ok, but don’t go out of their ways to greet you with a smile.
The store manager is often found not far from the checkout
area, which is located in the middle of the store. Although he
seems friendly, you get a feeling he’s watching you while
you’re around. That doesn’t make you feel comfortable – you
just quickly take what you need and leave the store.

11. Magnolia
There’s nothing special about the environment - the shop’s not large,
clean and pretty quiet (they used to have play promo announcements
before and probably still do it during the day).
Due to the lack of space, the product layout is sometimes confusing:
Oatmeal + Asian sauces& noodles Baby-food + Chips

12. Magnolia
Overall experience: neutral.
I might visit it if it’s on my way, I don’t need anything
special and am feeling too lazy to walk to Seventh
Continent.
Personal customer satisfaction:

13. Pyaterochka
Type: Russian retail discounter chain
Time of visit: 8-30 pm, weekday
It happened so that there are 2 Pyaterochka stores next to each
other – a larger one and a smaller one. Both have white-colored
outer walls and red roofs – as with Seventh Continent, you see
what store it is from far away.
The prices are remarkably lower than in most other retail chains

14. Pyaterochka
Everything here screams CHEAP.
Starting with promo-posters that greet you at the
entrance – they are attached with sticky tape!

15. Pyaterochka
Moving on to the floor tiles:
Smaller store: white floor was bad choice for
Larger store: some of the tiles Moscow, where we have lots of bad weather in
are crashed , some are autumn and winter. The cleaning ladies have to
replaced with new wash the floor all the time, and it doesn’t give
ones, having different color. the store a nice smell (we’ve come here to buy
food – remember?) and is still pretty useless.

16. Pyaterochka
Larger store: there are screens with promo videos
attached to the ceeling. The background music they
are playing between the ads reminded me of the
squeaky melodies my first ever mobile phone
produced many years ago.
Almost all the staff are migrants from Central Asia and you
can sometimes see them standing in the hall discussing
smth. in their own language.
The larger store is supposed to have someone in the fruit &
veg department, but the staff is often missing and you have
to wait for them or ask other workers to call someone.

17. Pyaterochka
POS posters are Some of the products are not taken out of
attached randomly and the cartons.
are not visible to the
customers.

18. Pyaterochka
The smaller store has recently removed
all the baskets, now only trolleys are
available for the customers. The
management probably think they were
oh-so-clever: now the clients will
automatically buy more. What they
have not thought through, however, is
that the store badly lacks space. The
aisles are very narrow and it’s
sometimes hard to move around with a
trolley.
As a result, those who are in a hurry
prefer not to take anything and hold
the products in their hands, which leads
to less impulsive purchases.

19. Pyaterochka
Overall experience: mostly negative. You can sell
products at cheap prices, but you don’t have to look
so cheap yourself. I definitely don’t enjoy being inside
these supermarkets.
Personal customer satisfaction:
(Surprisingly, they sell the freshest dairy products and
fruit in the area, so I give them 2 stars)

20. “24-hour” grocery
Type: small grocery store
Time of visit: 9-15 pm, weekday
The store has a large sign saying it’s open 24/7, but when I came there
at a quarter past 9, I was greeted by a closed door with a sign saying
the shop works till 9 pm. The lights were down, and there was nobody
inside.
Personal customer satisfaction – zero.

21. Billa
Type: International retail chain, mid-price segment
Time of visit: 2-30 pm and 9pm, weekdays
Billa is the newest supermarket in the area – it was opened only half a year
ago. Being located close to subway exits and 3 train stations, the store would
have large customer flow and flourish even if they did nothing at all to
attract clients. But they chose not to relax.
This is how the sign looks from outside.

22. Billa
The store is spacious, the aisles are large, and you easily move around with
both trolleys and baskets. Despite having lots of customers at any time of
the day, it never looks crowded.
The in-store music is nice and relaxing, and the promo announcements that
are sandwiched in between the songs are less irritating than in most other
places.

23. Billa
The color scheme is medium/dark grey with bright
accents. The store has dimmed lighting, the lamps
are pointed at the products.

24. Billa
Special offers are hard to avoid:
As you walk down the passage to the
supermarket, you see posters promoting
Billa’s special offers and activities.
The sliding doors have promo stickers.
Finally, you have to walk through a bright
promo gate to get to the shopping space.

25. Billa
Billa constantly has many products on sale. So many that actually
get a feeling about 30% of them are discounted. I’m sure it’s 5%
max, but they’ve cleverly placed these items around the store –on the
shelves with other products and on special offer stands along the main
aisles.

26. Billa
Despite many special offers, Billa has almost no branded areas or stands.
These two were the only ones I found in the
whole store.
And here is a part of dairy department. In
most supermarkets, dairy shelves are full of
branded stickers, wobblers and other
distracting POS materials, the products are
usually displayed by brand.
Here you can only see normal and discount
price labels, the products are sorted by type.

27. Billa
Overall experience: positive. It’s the only supermarket
in my area where sometimes I actually do take time to
walk around. I like it being spacious and not over-
branded. The music’s also nice and not too loud –
once I even caught myself thinking I’ve got to find the
song that was playing when I get home.
Personal customer satisfaction:

28. Noname groceries
After having bad luck with the first small grocery store, I
decided to give chance to 2 more that are located next to
Billa and one of the train stations.
Just for the sake of the assignment, as I knew they would
be trashy. Seriously – what do you expect if the shop
windows and the entrances look like this?

29. Noname groceries
Nothing, and you are right to do that.
The smell makes you want to pitch your nose.
The sound of old refrigerators tells you staying hungry is a healthier option than eating
anything from there.
The staff are more interested in talking to their colleagues than paying attention to the
customers.
The old promo stickers randomly applied everywhere look horrible.
I couldn’t spend more than 3 minutes there.
Any observations?
•Surprisingly, both these stores had the doors open, none of their competitors did (it
finally got cold, and we had our first snow last week).
•Surprisingly, both stores had customers who were brave enough to purchase food
there.

30. Noname groceries
Overall experience: negative.
I will not risk going there once again.
Personal customer satisfaction:

31. Thank you for the attention
and don’t stay hungry 