Are we manipulated into buying stuff we don't need?

The concept of shopping mall was invented by Victor Gruen, Austrian-born architect, who designed in 1956 the Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota. Today, the majority of shopping centers around the world are fully enclosed, introverted, multitiered complexes with an anchor-tenant, a garden court, a fountain and a food court.With the shopping malls came the new rules and practices to draw the customers in and to make them buy, buy more. Here are just a few of those.

Say, the escalators should be placed on the opposite sides on the each layer to make customers walk by all the shops and thus increase the chances of them popping in one-two of them. And this walking distance ideally should not exceed 1000 feet or 300 meters (which is the equivalent of about three city blocks) for a customer not to get tired and not to lose shopping interest.

The time a person needs to slow down and stop is also taken into account: so it is better not to have a store next door to a bank because shoppers speed up when they walk past a bank (there's nothing to look at), and thus are likely to walk past a shop without even noticing it.

The design should be transparent not to disrupt the view. For instance, the handrails on the second layer should be transparent for customers looking up from the first level to see the shops above them.

Lighting is crucial too. Ideally, the shoppers should not see the daylight at all, not to see the dusk coming that may alarm them that it is time to go home.

Another important thing is parking. Some shopping malls put more parking spaces on the upper level, because people go down much easier than they go up.

It is also known now that people walk the way they drive, and for that reason it is better to place the fast-food joints on the left, and the shops on the right side - most people will cross a lane to satisfy their hunger, but are unlikely to do so to buy shoes or a handbag. Some experts believe that this rule of right side is explained by the fact that most people are right-handed, or by the fact that right side of the brain is responsible for logic use of information absorbed by the left side of the brain.

It is not recommended to place women's product in a narrow aisle or a lower shelf, because as the experts found out a woman brushed on her behind while she's examining a product is unlikely to convert from a browser to a buyer - they just become too uncomfortable to concentrate on shopping after that.

And on the contrary, in the grocery store place those chocolate cookies on the bottom shelf for your kid to grab a bag and convince you to buy it even if it is not on your list. That strategy works best with the dads who are not so good as moms at saying no to their kids.

There are ways too to draw shoppers deeper in the store. Say, in a supermarket dairy products can be often placed on one side, fresh produce at the back, and meat on the other side for a buyer to make a full loop and see everything the shop sells. Many shops selling clothing for both sexes often put the menswear up front and the women's wear at the back, because women are not getting uncomfortable going through racks with the men’s clothing, while men are.

Another way to lure a shopper deeper into the clothing shop is to put basic things that people buy more often (T-shirts, pants) at the rear of the store. This way a customer spends more time in the shop, sees more, and therefore is likely to buy, buy more.

 

MONEY AND ECONOMIC RELATIONS.

 

History of Credit Cards

The first credit cards were issued in the United States in the 1920s by oil companies and hotel chains, and the purpose of these first cards was not the convenience, but to build customer loyalty.

Before plastic era the credit cards (or credit tokens) were made of metal coins or plates, celluloid, cardboard.

The first bank credit card named Charg, was invented in 1946 by a Brooklyn banker. Unlike today’s cards allowing for purchases with countless third parties all over the world, Charg was based on the program between bank customers and local merchants only.

In 1951, the Diners Club issued the credit cards intended to pay restaurant bills to 200 customers who could use the card at 27 restaurants in New York City. These first cards were made of cardboard.

The first American Express cards were launched in 1958. Bank of America issued its Bank Americard later in 1958. In 1976 the Bank Americard changed its name to Visa – a simple, memorable name that is pronounced the same in every language.

Today, consumers carry more than 1 billion Visa cards worldwide with more than 450 million of those cards in the United States.