The three main factors that seem to have come into play in planning out the layout of “Big lots!” are ease of movement, Theft Deterrent and Product placement. Upon Entering you are given a direct path to follow that leads you away from the cash registers and towards either merchandise or the Service Desk. This is achieved by the purposeful placement of the Service desk and shopping carts. When you walk straight froward from the entrances you walk into the Furniture department.
The furniture is placed in such a way that it looks like several small living rooms. There is adequate space to move about and try out all of the different pieces. The bathrooms are against the wall to the left making them visible from the service desk so that customers can be monitored by the associate attending the desk.
Facing East away from furniture there are several rows of shelf counters facing horizontally which provides several small hallways that are measured perfectly to accommodate one cart going in each direction. The shelf aisleways are actually very similar to a well planned out urban area. Each shelf unit represents a city block and their surrounding aisleways form streets. However, in some aisles there are oddly placed support poles that make it so that only one cart can pass, causing some congestion. Similar sections such as Auto and tools are placed next to one another to focus customer’s interest towards impulse buys. In addition, the electronics section is placed in such a way that it can be seen from the service desk because it is a high theft area. The cashier desks and service desk also make a path from the cash register directly to the exits. This makes customers exit without passing any additional merchandise that they could exit with without the cashier noticing.
The shelves are broken into two sections by a set of shelves that are vertical when facing East. This area is formatted differently so that it stands out from the other rows of shelves because it features seasonal merchandise that has to sell quickly. The area is more open to allow more customers to move around and access merchandise.
New media is seen to an extent within this space. The shelves on the shelving units can be removed and placed at one of many levels of the shelf counter through a peg and hole type system. This makes them customizable to the user and allows for modularity. The backing on the shelving units is made of a peg board with a grid of small holes that special hooks can be pushed into. This allows for a mix of pegged and shelved merchandise that can accommodate almost any size or shape of merchandise. This makes the environment very writerly for the merchandiser but readerly for the customer . However, the wide aisles that run adjascent to the shelves allow for the shopper to browse each section without being forced to walk down any of the actual aisles. This makes the shopping experience non-linear and more writerly for the customer.
The space is actually very similar to that of an online shop like Amazon.com . The Service desk would represent a home page in which vital information is placed and the “check-out” interface can be reached as well as information on where a customer can contact the seller. The merchandise is off to the side and organized by type. The aforementioned “adjacent aisleways” act as a link list that a website would have as a sidebar menu list of links. The user is interactive with the interface and either clicks a section or chooses to turn down a specific shopping aisle. The larger aisleways also act as “links” back to the “homepage” because they lead to the direct path of the Service Desk.
