Introduction###

In the morning of October 17th at 9 am, I visited the Community Mercantile at 9th and Iowa, and the Dillons at 3000 W 6th, at 10am. Since my home is near the two stores, I often buy products there. The Merc, mainly selling local organic food, is a middle-size store whose customers are aware of their healthy diet. However, Dillons is a large-size grocery supermarket which has many more kinds of products with a lower price, compared to Merc’s products. It is also obvious to find each store’s features from its slogan. The slogan of Merc is good, local and food, from which people can tell they can purchase fresh local food of good quality, and apparently at a higher price. Comparatively, the slogan of Dillons, great food, and low prices, strengthens the competitiveness of price.

From a designer’s point of view, designing the values of something is the core level of design. Only after determining the values of something can designers further develop the function parts and the appearance parts. On the same token, my observations of each store, such as architecture, signage, lighting, type and displays, all play the role of delivering the store’s values to some extent. Of course, assuring a good user experience is a premise of delivering values. Therefore, I will separate my tour at each store into several phases, and by analyzing each phase, I will compare its pros and cons. In the end, I will make a summary of whether the design of the store clearly delivers its core values to customers.

Finding###

As to the Merc, it is easy for me to locate it because it possesses a very attractive large green signboard. Moreover, the Merc is located at the intersection of two roads where it can be easily seen from any direction. As to Dillons, it also has an eye-catching red signboard for people to look for. But Dillons’ location is at the inner part of a square, and a tall building which is close to the right side of the square covers people’s sight if they come from the right lane.

Generally speaking, both stores are easy to locate and their signboards clearly express their brand color – green and red. And each company should use its brand color everywhere in its design to highlight its brand image in the public’s eyes so that people can recognize the brand instantly from tons of other brands.

Furthermore, both stores provide people with a large enough parking lot, which is convenient for Lawrence’s people who usually travel almost by car. Another good point of the Merc is that it puts many artificial vegetables in front of the door, such as potatoes, pumpkins, and flowers. These decorations build an organic atmosphere for customers even before they get in the store.

Shopping###

When I walked closer to the stores, both had their opening time on the door. Dillons is open 24 hours a day and the Merc is open from 7am to 10pm daily. It is a good reminder that tells your customers when the store is open. Immediately inside the door, there is a shopping cart area. Customers can take one to shop freely if they wish. In my opinion, to some extent, the shopping cart well illustrates each store’s style. For example, the Merc’s shopping cart’s handles are painted green but the Dillons’ are not painted. Also, the Merc installed cup holders on the shopping carts and the size of Merc’s shopping carts is much smaller than Dillons’.

Meanwhile, Dillons provides multiple kinds of shopping carts for special groups, including the babysitting style and the handicapped style. What I can tell from these observations is, firstly, that the Merc is more eager to advertise its green concept everywhere, because green is a more representative color of food compared with red, and secondly, that the Merc focuses more on differentiation but the Dillons focuses more on general.

Due to the Merc’s position in the market, its main customers are people who prefer local organic food. Therefore, to stand out from Walmart or Dillons(these chain supermarkets), the Merc has to design specifically for its target customers to keep alive from fierce competition and so-called market segmentation. On the other hand, Dillons positions itself as a chain supermarket, such as Walmart, which requires its products to be suitable for most people in the society. It also explains why Dillons strengthens its low price but Merc does not, since price is the first concern for the mainstream when they go shopping.

Next, when I started looking for products, both stores had clear signs to guide me to the position of each different category of products. Products are neatly arranged on the shelves. In front of each category, there is a tag telling its name and price. Also, to make their products look better, both stores installed white lights above the products. Furthermore, they use a different color on the price tag to refer to different discounts, such as yellow for low price and red for sale price.

Given the fact that the shopping experience has evolved over hundreds of years and people are accustomed to it now, both stores do a great job of help people shop. Here, I want to mention only two details about Dillons. First is Dillons’ signs. They are well designed into a triangle cube which has three sides. Each side has the same information of products’ categories. Two sides come together in 120 degrees, facing each side of people respectively, and the third side directly faces people when they come into the corridor, which offering people a broader perspective. Therefore, no matter which directions people face, they can choose the right sign to read its content conveniently rather than go near to the sign to view the content.

Second is that Dillons puts related products together on purpose. Considering such a scenario, when people want to buy chicken strips, Dillons put diced carrots and diced onions next to chicken strips. People may suddenly realize that they can cook a meal by using the three materials together. Instead of just buying one product, now people choose to buy three products under the kind reminder from Dillons. What a great trick, which not only makes more profit but also make people feel well-served.

As designers, detecting user’s potential demand is our job. Through analyzing tons of scenarios, designers can discover underlying connections between seemingly unrelated items. In addition, designers can derive inspiration from putting themselves into the user’s shoes. For example, sometimes when we have a hard time finding a product, we can design a machine with a touch screen, positioned in several conspicuous places in the store. People can type the name of the product they are looking on the screen. And after they tap the ‘SEARCH’ button, a small red light which is installed above the product will quickly flash three times, so people can locate the product by looking at the light.

Good ideas come from our daily careful observations. Of course, currently, the two stores have not provided similar navigation service. But the clerks of each store are there ready to help us. You can easily identify them because employees of both stores wear a uniform. Based on my personal experience, every time when I ask for help from their employees, they always provide very helpful assistance. Even if they do not know the answer, they will help me find the right person to solve my problem, which I appreciate a lot.

After I finished my purchase, I went to the checkout area. People can figure out which checkout lane is open by seeing whether the lane number is lit up. If you want to check out yourself, Dillons also provides automatic checkout machines, which largely speed up the checkout process. Because the number of Dillons’ customers is larger than that of the Merc, while I was waiting in line, Dillons had two open lines and the Merc had only one open line. However, I still waited for 2 minutes at Dillons because both lines had one person ahead of me, but waited for 0 minutes at the Merc. Both cashiers firstly asked me whether I had a membership card, and after I paid the money, only the cashier at the Merc asked me whether I needed the receipt. Though I believe most people would like to keep the receipt, the Merc considers the demand of the minority, which impresses me anyway.

Then I asked both cashiers, Patti and Dareece, how to apply for a membership card and what are uses of a membership card. They warmly answered my questions and gave me the application material. I remembered that the Merc used to use paper bags to package products but currently they switched to plastic bags too. As to me, I hate paper bag because once my milk glass bottle tore the fragile bag and broke into pieces. I believe the Merc noticed the problem so they stopped using paper bags though paper bags are more environmentally friendly, which accords with its slogan. Later, I pushed my shopping cart to the parking lot. I found both stores take going home into account so they specially built several return areas at the parking lot, which makes it easy for people to put products in their car and return the shopping cart.

After service###

When I went back home, I took the receipts out and analyze them. Because I asked the cashiers how to return the products if I do not like them, they told me to bring back the products and receipts together. Both receipts contain pretty similar information, such product’s name, price, contact number, location, transaction time, reference number and cashier’s name. But apparently, the receipt of the Merc looks much better. It aligns all its text left, uses lines to separate different parts, and put larger margins between text blocks, which makes the receipt neater and more legible.

Another interesting observation is that the receipt of the Merc advertises its Facebook and Twitter accounts but Dillons does not, from which I can tell the Merc is a more modern company that prefers to embrace new design and technology.

Conclusion###

It was a great opportunity for me make an in-depth investigation of the two stores. All in all, it is a competition between traditional companies and modern companies, and both of them are trying hard to exploit its strong points and avoid exposing its weaknesses for the purpose of delivering its values to customers and building its brand.**