How to make supermarket shopping feel safer and more normal

It’s hardly surprising. Supermarkets have, until this month, been the only indoor environment that has remained open during pandemic-hit Britain. And they were not designed for people to easily keep apart.

The industry had to address that issue almost overnight. Stores were decorated with miles of warning tape to establish one-way systems around aisles, hastily divided into two-metre segments. More tape told people where to stand and queue outside. Staff on entrances counted customers in and out. Messaging has been placed in stores to beat home safety policies.

But the sheer number of touchpoints in supermarkets means they are still seen as high-risk. Nearly a third of shoppers surveyed by Spark said they were scared by the risk of contracting coronavirus in store, and 24% now feel “anxious or nervous” navigating the aisles.

“An everyday activity has suddenly become a minefield of rules and measures,” says former Tesco executive Lee Harrison, MD of Spark Emotions.

Three months into the pandemic, the mults are working to make the store experience feel safer and less arduous through the use of more sophisticated techniques – from car queuing to temperature scanning. So can they enforce safety while providing a pleasurable shopping experience? Are high-tech solutions the answer or are lo-fi fixes just as effective?

If the mults can make it work, they stand to reap rewards. “The opportunity to get this right – from a positive behavioural change angle, from a brand perspective and also from a commercial standpoint – is huge,” says Harrison.

Lo-fi approach

And if the past few months have proven anything, it’s that the solutions don’t have to be high-tech or costly. The mults have largely employed basic interventions in the first instance.

Practically all major supermarkets have floor markings for till queues, social distancing and hygiene guidance at entrances and signage outside and within stores, according to a recent Shepper audit. About half have established a one-way system.

These quick and simple ways to ensure social distancing measures are largely accepted by shoppers. Indeed, one-way systems were the most welcome in-store safety measure after regular cleaning and compulsory hand sanitising, a BRC and Opinium consumer survey this month found.

But even these simple techniques can create complex problems. Tone is vital in helping shoppers stick to the rules without scaring them, says Kate Ancketill, CEO and founder of GDR Creative Intelligence, which works with Tesco, Waitrose and M&S. “The key is to stay as far away as possible from anything that could be found in a hospital. It needs to be brand-appropriate, but preferably conversational, reassuring, context-appropriate and light; a smattering of wit wouldn’t go amiss in many circumstances,” she says.

“The key is to stay as far away as possible from anything that could be found in a hospital”

Spark’s Harrison highlights the problems in an overly fraught message. “We are seeing a lot of negative messaging in store, which is constantly reminding shoppers things are not normal and Covid-19 is still a threat,” he says. “We are even seeing negative colours like yellow and black chevrons. These elements are always going to trigger anxiety.”

Supermarkets are still trying to hit the right notes, Harrison says. “If a store puts their safety messages in the same style as their special offers, then consumers will just assume that it’s promoting a specific product and potentially ignore them. In order for their messages to stand out they need to be radically different to everything else we see in a store.

“Stores really need to work on the saliency of their messages, which is something that very few stores are doing at the moment, they are more concerned about staying on brand,” he adds.

Siân Novakovic, strategy director at brand and retail consultancy Fitch, points out another potential issue: information overload. “The most important thing is to prioritise only the very core messages that make people feel safe and at ease, and to do so at the right points across the customer journey, because too much communication at every turn will overwhelm and induce anxiety in even the most confident shopper,” she says.

Supermarkets, of all retailers, are particularly prone to this overloading issue, Novakovic says. “This was an issue pre-Covid that’s only been accelerated by the need to add in an extra layer of safety messaging. It will be key for supermarkets to prioritise their in-store messaging and look for areas in which they can simplify and streamline,” she adds.

Trust Amazon to come up with the most high-tech solution on the market. This month, it revealed a whizzy new tool to help its staff socially distance. The ‘Distance Assistant’ uses computer vision to detect people in a camera feed, which works alongside depth sensors to determine an accurate distance measurement between individuals.

“Given social distancing isn’t always natural, the team set out to use augmented reality to create a magic mirror-like tool that helps associates see their physical distancing from others,” says Amazon VP of robotics Brad Porter.

As people walk past the camera, a monitor displays live video with visual overlays. Those remaining six feet apart are highlighted with green circles, while those who are closer together are circled in red.

“The on-screen indicators are designed to remind and encourage associates to maintain appropriate distance from others,” says Porter.

The company plans to open source the technology so it can be quickly rolled out by others. Given that the self-contained device requires only a standard electrical outlet, it could prove a useful tool in the supermarkets.

High-tech

Simplifying and streamlining is, of course, the primary aim of the new technological solutions that have emerged in recent months.

Some are simple and intuitive. Aldi is putting traffic lights at store entrances. Automatic doors only open when the lights are green. “It requires no extra steps on the part of the consumers,” Harrison says. “This makes it far more likely that the consumer is likely to accept it.”

The same simplicity is at the core of the proposition by Oxford Foundry-based Lanterne, which has applied an app originally designed for conflict zones to help people avoid supermarkets at their most stress-inducing.

Using a combination of open datasets and crowdsourced information, the Crowdless tool gives shoppers real-time information on how busy stores are, so they can avoid particularly crowded periods.

“Our goal is to support retailers by helping their customers discover the best times to shop,” says Crowdless co-founder Alex Barnes.

“This will lead to an even distribution of shoppers through the day, creating higher revenue for retailers, and happier customers that complete their shopping without the queue,” Barnes adds.

Crowdless is “actively pursuing collaborations with supermarkets and malls” and is working on using machine-learning algorithms so the app can predict less busy periods for shopping trips, rather than just observe them.

It’s not alone. Because apps are emerging as a common solution to crowding problem. Ones like Crowd Solo by Holovis feature “real-time proximity alerts” that make a shopper’s phone sound or vibrate when they are within two metres of another shopper – providing they too are using the app.

Meanwhile, more than 600,000 people have downloaded and used Supermarket Check-In, an app that asks shoppers to fill in how long their wait was, to provide an “indicative prediction of what queues people can expect whenever they plan to visit”.

Several supermarkets are also inputting information to the app to “update shoppers on an informal basis locally” says its developer Paul Hulatt. M&S is understood to be doing so at scale.

Overseas, retailers are taking matters into their own hands. See Co-op Italy, which has developed a pre-booking app that enables customers to request and receive a set time for their shop.

It is proving a popular proposition. Coop Italy’s technology partner Sopra Steria is handling more than 130,000 bookings a day through the ‘Q@Home’ app, across 450 of the retailer’s Liguria stores.

“It’s similar to the speedy boarding or queue-busting at theme parks,” says Adam Trott, head of retail at Sopra Steria. “The allocation of bookable slots is under the control of the supermarket so they can see the full picture.

“Retailers are working through ways to work within the restrictions without damaging their businesses, working through scenarios from time of day to store format,” Trott adds. “People are only just now adapting to the new ways of shopping and will be increasingly open to the certainty this technology offers.”

Social media

Apps do, however, rely on customers making the download for each store they use. “If you require consumers to download an app before they go shopping, you’re adding an extra barrier,” says Harrison. “The critical issue here is: are we making the behaviour easy for the consumer?”

Novakovic also warns against creating too many extra steps in the customer’s journey. “Grocers mustn’t underestimate the importance of the basics, and ask themselves: do you really want to invest money in teaching people how to do things again when they have already adapted to a ‘new normal’ supermarket routine throughout the crisis? If you’re trying to reduce anxiety, do you really want to keep changing things?”

A more straightforward fix could be for retailers to regularly share information on existing channels. For example, they could use social media to update customers on how busy stores are.

“Grocers should look to optimise all channels across the omnichannel journey, so you’re not just loading the physical store with messaging,” says Novakovic. “One of the things that’s increasingly important to consumers is getting safety information ahead of time – for example, consumers are likely to check their social channels first before going out to see whether a particular area is busy and best avoided.”

This information could prove particularly crucial once the winter months arrive. While few complain about waiting in the sunshine, cold and rain are a different matter. That’s why supermarkets are taking pre-emptive action on this front, too. Asda is testing the efficacy of a virtual queuing system in Middleton, Leeds, which enables customers to join a queue remotely and wait in their cars. Tesco and Sainsbury’s are understood to be looking into similar solutions.

Human element

These carefully planned systems can’t control everything, though. As the saying goes, hell is other people. And shoppers won’t necessarily adhere to the rules.

“A lot of it is to do with other shoppers,” says Guy Redwood, founder of user experience and behavioural research agency SimpleUsability, which works with Asda, Morrisons and Amazon. “Most of the feedback we’ve heard about people feeling uncomfortable is when other customers are either completely ignoring the rules or are taking it to the extreme, lingering at the end of an aisle putting pressure on them to find items.”

SimpleUsability research on pandemic supermarket shopping found 72% of people felt less pleasure in visiting a physical shop because of the effort and safety measures needed to stay safe.

“Shoppers are most concerned by other shoppers’ behaviour,” Redwood adds. “People are paranoid and everybody has different expectations of other people’s behaviour, so it’s really hard to stop that.”

So despite all the available tech, store staff can prove the most effective way of tackling the issue. They are an often “overlooked consideration”, but are more crucial than all the hazard tape in the world, argues Fitch’s Novakovic. “Well-trained staff and responsive service design has huge potential to make customers feel far more comfortable and at ease within the environment in a way that a piece of messaging can’t,” she says.

“Businesses should start by looking at, and consulting with, staff on the measures and messaging that help them to feel in control and safe. If staff feel safe – and are well-trained in how to keep themselves and customers safe – they have the potential to lead and support new shopper behaviours,” Novakovic adds.

It is important, then, that staff know what to do, can feed back, and see the knowledge of their store put to use, says Redmond. “When initiatives get rolled out across large groups there is a risk of the local team ‘just doing as they’re told’ and it not working as well as it could,” he says. “Get the team to regularly walk through the store and think about how they feel. If they feel unsafe, they need to think about why and what will fix it.”

Store colleagues are key to making shoppers feel happier too, points out Harrison. “We also need to consider that as a species, we trust other humans more than we trust machines. And ‘trust’ is an emotion. Emotions are 3,000 times more persuasive than rational thought. So, in this instance, someone welcoming shoppers to the store can be one of the most efficient and effective methods,” Harrison says.

Ultimately, a combination of simple messaging, technology and staff will ensure shoppers feel at ease. As Harrison puts it: “The need to adhere to these guidelines is a serious matter. We need to disrupt in such a way we help shoppers perform a new behaviour.”

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