Working the Crowd

For all the media coverage Black Friday receives, retailers are surprisingly reluctant to talk about the measures they take to handle the hordes of consumers that amass at their doors the day after Thanksgiving.

Methods and strategies for protecting customers and associates may be perceived as trade secrets among retailers, but there are no such qualms among consultants and academics studying best practices for controlling crowds at retail venues.

Most advise keeping the assembling masses engaged and dividing or segmenting the group by various means. Included in the latter are online registration for early bird passes or lottery numbers to determine entry order, as well as handing out numbers, wristbands or similar indicators on site to demark shoppers who will be allowed entrance in a predetermined order.
Using multiple entrances/exits is one option; another is to disperse the super-promotional merchandise so the crowds don’t head for the same section of the store. There are also recommendations for engaging with shoppers as they start to gather.

“Take a tip from amusement parks and post signs that say things like, ‘From this point there is a 30-minute wait,’ so even if it takes a little longer, people won’t feel it’s too long a wait,” says Eric White, director of retail strategy for Wren Solutions. He recommends that one focus of the event staff should be on customer service, meaning they make the wait more interesting and comfortable by offering information about products, quantities still available and other sales promotions.

Soothing shoppers with music
There is more to engaging a crowd than signage and audio messages, says Grace Ho, a sensory integration specialist affiliated with the occupational science and therapy council at the University of Southern California.

“It is always emotions that control economic and human behavior,” she says, so at crowd events like Black Friday sales, “we need to take advantage of all five senses so as not to excite them too much” and lose control. “Good sensory input of audio, visual, tactile, proprioception and kinesthetic elements” should be considered.

In addition to common sense advice — using yellow tape to define waiting lanes, moveable signage marking the end of the line and uniformed security personnel to patrol the area — Ho suggests using colors, aromas and music to influence the crowd.

For example, green is relaxing, so non-security staff could wear green aprons while offering coffee or water to the crowd, an exercise Ho calls “noble bribery.” Other calming colors are blue, silver and gold. Vanilla, cinnamon and lavender are warm and calming to the olfactory senses, as is holiday and seasonal music.

Retailers planning sales events must address the sometimes opposing perspectives of merchants and the asset protection teams, says White. The marketing and merchandising staff are judged mainly on crowd turnout and merchandise sold, while the success criteria for the LP teams are greatly affected by how well they diffuse competitive situations that could disrupt the shopping crowd.

“The metrics for success must include translating the large, excited crowd into big sales and happy customers,” he says. “The loss prevention team contributes by ensuring the crowd is under control and orderly, risks are evaluated [and] threats mitigated before anything happens, and a post-event recap evaluates what could improve with the next event.”

One factor that consultants couldn’t agree on: Whether there should be a long line at the entrance, or the line should be “snaked,” zigzag fashion.

“Loss prevention and security people like to snake the line because it makes the crowd more compact and easier to patrol on the perimeter, and all their resources can be concentrated there,” White says. A long line “can present problems by blocking access and egress and stretching resources over more territory.”

White is in favor of using music to engage waiting crowds because it “causes people to listen. Not only does this dissipate crowd noise, but if you want to make an announcement and stop the music, everybody is waiting to hear it.”

Addressing a specific best practice culled from the Black Friday tragedy two years ago at a Walmart in Long Island, N.Y., is the need for “a remote control for opening the door,” says Paul Purcell, a security analyst and pandemic consultant with InfoQuest and operator of www.disasterprep101.com. “You might use a key to unlock the deadbolt, but the door should be opened electronically from inside, so no one is in the path of those coming into the store.”