Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

(July 2009) posted on Wed Jul 22, 2009

New Lowe’s stores make it a pleasure to bring stuff back.

By Steve Kaufman

Retailers love it when we purchase goods. There’s an entirely different level of enthusiasm if we want to return something. If the design of the store is any indication, they want to make it as difficult and cumbersome as possible. Usually, you have to find that special line or area or go to some customer service desk where you’re behind employees cashing paychecks, people buying lottery tickets and shoppers opening new accounts. It’s almost as if they hope you’ll get tired of waiting, keep what you bought and go back home.

So how refreshing it was recently to visit a new Lowe’s stores in my area on the quest for a new microwave oven. It was a prototypical Lowe’s big box, except for one difference: It had a separate entrance and a confined area for people to make returns.

I commented to the sales manager how impressed I’d been by that separate returns area. I said it makes a customer feel less like a pariah for returning merchandise and also allows the shopper to work with a Lowe’s person whose sole purpose is to make exchanges. You just know she’ll get it right – and without the attitude.

He seemed pleased to hear the positive comments. Yes, he said, all new stores will be designed with that devoted returns area. Not only do customers like it, he said, and not only does it clarify the pathway as customers enter the store, but it’s been a boon to store security. In the past, he said, a shopper could take an item off the shelf, wander into the returns area and, even without a receipt, get a store credit for a future purchase. This system prevents that. So it’s one of those win-wins: Shoppers like it and it serves the retailer’s other needs.

We talk so much about store design in terms of creating an environment, setting a tone, sending soothing subliminal signals to the shopper. We too often forget that store design is also forged in the hard business of running a retail operation, solving specific problems, managing practical issues. Lowe’s has always seemed to address the softer issues of personality and warmth. Here’s proof that store design can accomplish the harder objectives, too, and all of it ends up pleasing the shopper.