This week, as we emerge from the pandemic, we’re going to discuss the use of queuing fixtures to maximize revenue and profits at or near your checkout counter. As more customers return to in-store shopping, retailers must consider the possibility that in-store buying behavior has and will continue to change. During the pandemic, customers became comfortable with social distancing (6 ft between each person in line). Will they maintain this distance going forward, or will they stand closer to each other? Will they be interested in point-of-sale merchandise, or will they simply want to pay and leave as quickly as possible? These and other questions will make it difficult for retailers to know definitively how to maximize revenue at or near checkout.
Retailers must be prepared to experiment – to test various configurations of queuing fixtures with different combinations of merchandise. The efficiency and effectiveness of the tests will depend in part on the queuing fixtures. In considering these fixtures, retailers should ask the following questions:
- How much space do I have for queuing fixtures? Can I use 18 inch fixtures or do I only have room for 12 inch?
- How much flexibility do I want, or in other words, how easy will it be for me to reconfigure the fixtures? Given space limitations, 12-inch fixtures may provide more configuration choices than 18-inch.
- What types of merchandise do I believe the customers will buy? If you’re not sure or want more room to experiment, you should consider shelving with pegboard backs. Pegboard enables you to offer a greater variety of merchandise and increase the number of SKUs per square foot.
If you’d like to learn more about the use of queuing fixtures to maximize revenue at or near the checkout, please call us at 800-576-7577 or www.midwestretailservices.com
