All 21 entries

The complete register, in the order a shopper meets it: floor, route, label, interruption, till, screen. Every entry names one technique, says where it came from, and says what it is designed to do.

No.	Entry	What it is
01 · Threshold — The first four metres, before you have decided anything.
01	The first four metres	The area inside the door is deliberately underused. Shoppers arriving from a street or a car park are still adjusting — walking fast, not yet looking — so anything placed there is largely wasted, and the floor is designed to let them slow down before the selling starts.
02	Entrance on the right	Most floors turn shoppers anticlockwise, and the reason offered is habit rather than anything better evidenced.
03	The first thing you see	Produce and flowers at the entrance, and what they are there to signal.
02 · Route — The path the floor is built to make you walk.
04	Why the milk is at the back	Staples are placed where reaching them means crossing the floor. The most reliable layout decision in retail.
05	The perimeter loop	Fresh categories around the edge, ambient in the middle, and a route that walks you past both.
06	Dead ends and racetracks	Forced paths versus free ones, and what each costs in irritation.
07	The aisle nobody enters	Every floor has one, and the fix is rarely more signage.
03 · Number — Prices, anchors and what a discount is measured against.
08	The nine everybody has seen through	Charm pricing survives universal awareness of it, which is the interesting part — the effect appears to work on reading speed rather than on belief.
09	The anchor	A discount needs a number to be measured against, and that number is chosen.
10	Eye level is the expensive shelf	Shelf position is sold, and the band at adult eye height costs most.
11	Multibuys that are not savings	Volume framed as value, and the unit price that quietly disagrees.
04 · Interruption — The things placed to stop you.
12	The end-cap	The most valuable fixture in the shop, because it interrupts a route rather than sitting along one.
13	Dump bins and disorder	Deliberate untidiness reads as a bargain.
14	The queue	The one place a shopper is stationary and bored.
05 · Record — Loyalty schemes and what is actually being collected.
15	Loyalty is a data programme	The discount is the price paid for the basket-level record, which is worth more than the discount.
16	What a basket reveals	Sequence, frequency and combination say more than any single purchase.
17	The personalised offer	Targeted at what you already buy, which is why it feels generous.
06 · Screen — The same techniques, rebuilt online.
18	The same floor, on a screen	Position, interruption and anchoring all have direct online equivalents, and the screen versions are measurable in a way the shop never was.
19	Urgency timers and stock scarcity	Manufactured deadlines, and how to tell a real one.
20	A basket that follows you home	The abandoned-basket email as the end-cap of the internet.
21	The default option	Pre-selected is chosen far more often than it would be otherwise.