This Is Your Brain on Shopping

The shopper’s brain is about 100,000 years old.

Well, actually it’s more like a few 100 million years old, but by about 100,000 years ago the human brain was pretty much set and looked very much like what we have today.

You would think that since we all have one and that it is very much responsible for making up the ‘you’ in you, that the brain would need no introduction. But, if you asked people to name five things under the hood of their car they would rattle off carburetor, spark plugs, cylinders, air filter and maybe pistons. Asked to do the same with the brain and they’re stumped, which puts retailers in a bit in a bit of a quandary when trying to capture the hearts and minds of customers.

Weighing in at about 3 pounds and having the consistency of firm tofu the brain has about a quadrillion neural connections, enabling it to make about 200 billion operations a second and in doing so it sucks up 20 percent of our body’s energy.

The brain is stunning in its physical complexity and remarkable for its metaphysical mind. When it’s on a shopping trip, it is far from simply being along for the ride but it actually plays a role in creating the experience.

Our brain helps us understands the world by creating specific neural firing patterns that come to represent objects and experiences in the form of a multitude of mental models. The consistency in how customers replay these models sets up expectations and cements understanding of what it means to be shopping one retail place over another.

That said, it loves novelty and is able to pick up interruptions in patterns long before we can decode the pattern itself. This is welcome news when you consider how a customer scans the store environment, which is often more ‘visual noise’ than pattern. Getting something to attract a customer’s attention in an 80,000-square-foot store with a 100,000 SKUs isn’t actually that hard if you know that the brain is prone to perceiving patterns and looks for anomalies in the visual field.

Most of all, the brain is an emotional relationship magnet that seeks connection fueled by empathy, storytelling and play. Mirror neurons make me yawn when I see you yawn and are connected to dopamine, the “pleasure chemical.” When you see a sales associate’s smiling face it triggers a network that was in place 100 million years ago, setting you up for a better experience.

Given that shopping has always been social activity, the brain is right at home.

David Kepron, AIA, LEED BD+C, RDI, will speak at VMSD’s International Retail Design Conference (September 17-19 in Vancouver) on “Brains, Brains and Buying: How Your Brain Goes Shopping and Why it Matters to Store Design.”

David Kepron is the creative director of Little’s Brand Experience Studio and author of “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World,” published by ST Media Group Intl. and available online from ST Books. His retail design work focuses on the creation of relevant shopping experiences at the intersection of architecture, sociology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies. @davidkepron; www.retail-r-evolution.com; www.littleonline.com