People are more anxious these days, and the data backs it up. This anxiety is extending into the store, as our panel of shopper, store and economic experts on last week’s Retail Unfiltered highlighted.

“You've got an anxious customer,” said international retail consultant Renee Hartmann, “one whose preferences and habits are changing really quickly.”

So let us put ourselves into the shoes of that shopper. Economic pressure is mounting. That only increases time pressure. If your shopping comes during the workday, there is that angst to get it done, to get back to “green” on Microsoft Teams, or back onto the couch to check emails.

Now, we turn to you, the retail space planning audience reading today. You don’t want your stores amplifying the shopper’s angst. And we believe you’re uniquely positioned to help that shopper win the battle against anxiety.

Here’s how. In listening to our panel of Retail Unfiltered experts, and in connecting with other space experts who are in the field every day, we’ve identified three solutions within your span of control that you can implement to make the shopper journey through the store easier and more pleasurable.

1. Help shoppers make easier choices

In last week's Retail Unfiltered, which previewed the 2027 CMA-SIMA Elevate Conference Feb. 22-24 in Las Vegas at Caesars Place, shopper loyalty expert Sharon Yourell Lawlor described how rising uncertainty is making shoppers think much harder about the choices they are making at shelf.

That unease, Yourell Lawlor said, can open the door for shoppers to reconsider their loyalty to products that have long been staples in their cart. As she sees it, retailers and manufacturers must lead through a value lens, not a price lens.

She detailed the psychology this way:

“Winning in uncertainty means helping shoppers feel confident in the choices that they're making,” Yourell Lawlor said. “Now, how can we do that? Well, there's lots of simple things that we can do to support.

“The first is to make value visible. Help me see why you're worth it, and why it's worth paying more for, or why it's worth creating that value. … It's really important that you reduce the effort that the shopper has to make in order to make those choices.”

How Space Planners Can Help

For micro-space planning, following best practices around alignment to consumer decision trees (CDTs) would be a great start. CDTs capture the choices shoppers make in sequential fashion, including the attributes they weigh as they make purchasing decisions. Do your planograms match the newest CDTs from Shopper Insights? If they don’t, your category can suffer. Linkage between Shopper Insights and Space Planning must be stronger than ever in these topsy-turvy times.

For macro-space planning, one consideration could simply be reducing any feeling of clutter within your stores.

Joel Goldstein, president of Mr. Checkout Distributors, which places CPG goods in independent grocers, pharmacies and convenience stores, has noticed that bigger retailers are beginning to borrow some design ideas from the convenience channel, including “clear sightlines from the entrance to the back wall so a shopper can read the store in five seconds.”

If five seconds seems like too tall a hurdle, perhaps walk into a new store, look around, and count to five. Do you have a general idea of where you want to go? How long does it take? No matter the answer, the premise is clear: every second of searching you can take off the shopper’s watch could be used for the sort of pleasant discovery that leads to conversion.

2. Ease shopper anxiety around finding their preferred items on shelf

Out-of-stocks surged during COVID due to supply-chain issues. But those issues have receded. Now, retailers are taking a laser focus to item availability, including AI-powered shelf scanning, as Hartmann highlighted during Retail Unfiltered.

As retailers hone in on this issue, so too must space planners focus on the fundamentals of having the right items in the right places, in the right quantities on shelf.

How Space Planners Can Help

When items get their fair share of space on shelf relative to sales — the closer to 100% of space allocated versus sales generated, the better — shoppers can make protect, trade and treat decisions efficiently. But a shelf that’s out of step with shopper tastes opens the door to a host of consequences for both retailers and suppliers.

The good news? Space planners can help reduce these risks.

Micro-space planners can do their part to alleviate out-of-stock stress with strong analysis around share of sales, share of space and average days of supply for items within the category. Space-to-sales gaps should be flagged immediately and analyzed for root causes.

An item’s category role must be kept firmly in mind, too; the star of yesterday may have faded in today’s changing landscape, and an emerging brand may now suddenly find itself a cash cow that needs significantly more space to shine. The analysis here, coupled with the latest shopper insights, can allow suppliers and retailers to catch up with shoppers before financial performance suffers long term.

Macro-space planners, meanwhile, can help their retailers be first movers around changing category roles and the need to rethink sections of the store to reflect shopper tastes, particularly around emerging destination categories. As always, a store’s core shopper should be front and center in the analysis.

3. Help promote solutions for the products shoppers buy

Once shoppers add an item to the cart, their work is only beginning, particularly around food for meals. After all, someone must cook, and the time pressure felt in-store doesn’t go away at home in front of the stove.

Here, Yourell Lawlor challenged brands and retailers to be “a solutions provider” for shoppers. For instance, AI-assisted recipes are one way to connect solutions to products, either via QR codes on packaging, shelving, retail media or retailer apps.

“As a shopper's going down the aisle . . . they're being given menu inspiration on what to serve up for the kids for the week,” she said.

How Space Planners Can Help

Macro-space planners can be leaders here through layouts that promote logical adjacencies, or dedicated spaces tied to common shopper journeys.

For instance, GLP-1s can lead to gastrointestinal symptoms. What about creating a “GLP-1 Launch” zone that brings together common food items consumed while taking the medication, along with OTC drugs that counteract GLP-1 side effects, such as acid reflux? A recent ARC webinar hosted by Shopper Intelligence showed that GLP-1 education is a gap both brands and retailers should work to narrow. Why can’t space planners help narrow that gap?

Micro-space planners, meanwhile, can support by designing planograms aligned to shopper missions and need states, and they can use strategies such as vertical blocking to promote a sense of each descending product solving a new shopper problem.

Tying It Together

Shoppers are anxious. But space planners have the means to bring the temperature down. Here are three steps:

Reduce choice fatigue with shelf and floorplan best practices.
Employ space analysis best practices to ensure the right items are in the right quantities in the right place on shelf.
Provide product-use-case solutions for shoppers within store layouts.

Space planners are superb executioners. But at a time where shoppers can feel like the walls are closing in on them, it's time for space planners to be change influencers, too.