Grocery stores are designed to guide attention and encourage purchases. New research suggests that one common strategy, placing product displays directly in aisles, may have the opposite effect.
In a study published in PLOS One, researchers found that in-aisle displays were associated with reduced sales and fewer purchase-related behaviors in a real-world grocery store setting. The effect appeared to be linked to how crowded and constrained shoppers felt while navigating the space.
“The research shows that adding merchandise into store aisles can actually reduce overall sales by making the environment feel crowded and harder to navigate,” said lead author Mathias Streicher of Austria’s Department of Management and Marketing.
The study combined multiple approaches, including tracking sales data in a grocery store aisle, observing shopper behavior and testing perceptions in an online experiment.
In the in-store portion, researchers compared six weeks of sales data from an aisle with mid-aisle display stands to six weeks after those displays were removed. Sales increased after the displays were taken away, with the aisle’s share of total store revenue rising from 4.33% to 4.83%.
Observations of shopper behavior pointed to a possible explanation. When displays were removed, shoppers stopped and physically handled products more often, a behavior that has been linked to higher likelihood of purchase. This effect was especially pronounced among shoppers using carts.
Cart users interacted with products more than seven times as often when displays were absent compared to when they were present. Basket users showed a similar pattern, though the difference was smaller.
In a separate online experiment, participants viewed images of the same aisle with and without displays. They consistently rated the aisles with displays as more crowded and reported feeling less in control of their movement, particularly when imagining shopping with a cart.
Together, the findings suggest that physical layout can influence how shoppers move through a store, how comfortable they feel and how likely they are to engage with products.
The study did not examine specific food choices or diet quality. However, it highlights how subtle features of the shopping environment may shape purchasing behavior, which in turn can influence what ends up in the cart.
The research was conducted in a single grocery store aisle and focused on a limited set of products, which may limit how broadly the findings apply. Other factors, such as promotions, store traffic and seasonal changes, were not fully explored.
The authors reported no specific funding for this study and no competing interests.