Abstract
Retail Marketing plans, sales promotional ideas, does the branding and advertising for the retailer. Getting the brand noticed favourably at a point of sale, dramatically affects the chance of getting higher retail sales. The design of a store is really important because it helps the retailer to attract customers, to cultivate their interest to a great extent, and then it will help the customer to purchase even more than what they have really intended.. But what is actually a store design? The design of a store is, according to Mintel, "the visual result of a conceptual approach to store design & merchandising display. The aim is to increase the appeal of the customer as part of the retail marketing strategy". In fact, this is the way you manage to get the customer enter your store, stay there for a while and buy the most he can. It can be put in this way that it is the combination of colours, the atmospherics, the sounds, the ambience, the merchandising in the store, and the layout that defines store design. There are four typical/common layouts: grid pattern layout, free-flow layout, boutique layout and guided shoppers flows.
The grid pattern layout is typical to the supermarkets. In fact, it is just like in a library: where there are long parallel rows of shelves and commodities are in display for the customer to look at it without much problems. Therefore the customer just has to follow the shelves, but cannot move so much within the aisles. This type of layout allows the maximisation of the space, and reflects an image that the goods are within the customer's reach.
