A School of Emergent Priorities paper raises and lowers a supermarket's yellow special-price tag across 24 shelf runs without a detectable change in sales, and the University fixes a Standard Tag Offset for its own premises.
A School of Emergent Priorities paper moves a supermarket special-price tag through four heights over eight weeks and finds the sales beneath it unmoved
A yellow tag has been lifted and lowered along 24 supermarket shelves for eight weeks, and the sales beneath it have stayed where they were. “STOOP”, a paper from the School of Emergent Priorities published today, sets out the platform that did the lifting and the University’s response to what it found.
The shelf belongs to the people who stock it and the people who reach for it, and the study was a way of keeping both of them company.
— Professor Verity Marris, Professor and Director, Trajectory Analytics Group
The paper, written by Professor Marris with Dr Iben Chikere and Dr Petra Umbile, describes a rail that carries a tag through four preset heights and records where it comes to rest. Stores in one regional operator’s network took part across three product categories, and each shelf visited every height in turn. The team reports the result as it came, without a footnote reaching for something else.
The University has adopted the printer’s own position as its Standard Tag Offset. From now on no shelf, door, noticeboard or menu tag on University premises will be mounted more than a small fixed distance from it, and the 24 rails have been fitted to University noticeboards and locked at that position for the remainder of the strategic period. Dr Umbile said the team had half expected to be asked where the tag should go, and was glad to be able to answer in millimetres.
The release reflects the School’s continuing interest in the small decisions that furniture makes on everyone’s behalf. Facilities will keep the register of tag positions.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.52b768.