An interesting, and slightly tirade-like blog post by a friend and ex-colleague (the wonderful Judy Delin) about the stresses of supermarket shopping with her mother who has dementia reminded me of a related issue I wanted to get off my chest.
Our local Marks & Spencer seems to rearrange their food section on a weekly basis. I know I’ll get in trouble for stereotyping here, but Marks & Spencer does have a large proportion of older customers; maybe it’s something to do with the town centre location and bus routes.
Why they insist on moving the produce round so frequently is entirely lost on me, but there is one major factor that lets them get away with it, and that’s a lack of fixed signage. I guess it’s partly down to scale: the big supermarkets have to provide a decent means of navigation to keep customers moving through the store.
In this smaller store, the lack of signage means they have nothing that forces them to lay out the store in a consistent way. And of course the lack of any signage doubles up as a lack of guidance for customers in their search for what they need.
So while Judy’s mum was struggling with an overload of information, the problem in this situation is with consistency. For me it’s mildly frustrating having to guess where the sausage rolls will be this time, but for others there is potential for it to become quite disconcerting.
Let′s discuss: leave a comment and see where the conversation goes