Impulse buying is a great asset for the physical retail shop unlike online retail shops. Even though it’s an asset, it must be efficiently used by considering the product, arrangement or placement and finally catching the attention of customers.  This season, you can encourage impulse buying in your retail shop by trying some of these practices.

Checkout counter

Checkout is a well-known point for encouraging impulse buying. Even customers are realizing the trick of the counter and are building a resistance to it yet, it can still be used as a point of encouraging impulse buying. How? Place cheaper items on the counter like sweets, batteries, pens, pencils and tissues. Cheaper items might not seem too much for customers to pay for and they wouldn’t even realize it. Also, they can use their payment balances to buy those items.

Place impulse items closer to high demand items

Another point to encourage impulse buying is placing impulse items to high demand items that complement them. This strategy encourages the customer to buy both items since they complete each other. For example, you can place a phone case as an impulse item to a mobile phone which is high in demand. When a customer buys the phone, they may be tempted to buy the phone case to complement the phone.

Anticipate customer needs and suggest

Sometimes suggesting items to customers will encourage impulse buying. Suggesting items to customers does not mean just any item but items that are in line with what they are shopping for. To be able to suggest the right items to them, you need to observe your customer while they are shopping in order to give you an idea of the impulse item to suggest to them. For instance for a customer shopping for room furniture, you can suggest a toy to give their furniture a perfect and artistic look.

Use of FOMO (fear of missing out)

Customers do not like it when they miss out on a new good product. This gives you the  opportunity to use posters and signages that suggest that impulse items are good and high on demand, for example, ‘this is what you need’, ‘you need this!’, ‘gotta have it now!’. It creates in the customer the urgency to buy those products because they don’t want to miss out on those items.

Offer samples to customers

Offering samples to customers can cause financial constraints on your business, however if you can afford to give them out,  you can drive in more impulse sales. Offering a sample to a customer to use or taste may encourage them to buy on impulse because they like them.

Finally in this Christmas season, showcase Christmas items to customers on the retail checkout counter. That might be their final purchasing point. Some of the items to showcase are Christmas hats, balloons, décor ornaments and my favorite, chocolates.