Special aisle for blokes? Rethinking the shopping behaviours of your market

A great little story grabbed my attention the other day. A supermarket in New York had set up “Man Isle”, an aisle dedicated to the shopping needs and behaviours of men.

According to the Business Insider, Westside Market created the section containing chips, beer, razors, condoms and beef jerky based on two things; more men were shopping and there were common goods that the guys were shopping for.

What can we take from this?

1. Reduce pain points for an underserviced market segment

Structuring their supermarket around the buyer’s experience was a great way of reducing pain points and encouraging habituation. The significant pain point? Overwhelming choice. The Man Isle reduces choices to a minimum and positions complementary items (e.g. beer and chips) together. The lesson is always to look at your business from your customer’s perspective and ensure you make doing business with you as easy as possible.

2. Target a profitable segment

Westside had researched the trend toward male shopping and determined the segment was worth targeting. This is important – it’s only worth customising the experience if you expect to gain a return on your investment through market share, volumes or margin.

Part of the consideration should of course be any impacts on the rest of your market. For instance, if Westside had been very aggressive in its targeting of male shoppers it may have inadvertently disenfranchised female shoppers, so striking a balance in how it catered for different shoppers was vital.

3. Give it a try

The team at Westside created the aisle on the basis of insight, observation and throwing a list of ideas together. They knew what they liked shopping for, so that was the basis of how they stocked the aisle and they are willing to test and learn on the basis of market response.

We can sometimes forget that our own expectations of customer service are a great source of knowledge for how our customers like to be treated. After all, we are all consumers, and the main thing holding us back from growth is fear of failure.

Westside have differentiated themselves by rethinking how their business can better serve customers. I hope you can too.

Bri Williams runs People Patterns Pty Ltd, a consultancy specialising in the application of behavioural economics to everyday business issues. Bri is a presenter, consultant and author who you can find out more about at www.peoplepatterns.com.au, viabri@peoplepatterns.com.au or by following on Twitter @peoplepatterns. Bri’s book, “22 Minutes to a Better Business”, about how behavioural economics can help you tackle everyday business issues, is available through the Blurb bookstore.