Lessons learned while shopping

I went shopping today . . . and thought about libraries. Yes, I think about libraries a lot (even on Sunday) – some say I should get a life ;^)

First I went to Home Depot to buy a new kitchen faucet. There was a very expansive faucet display, with every kind and price faucet you could want, all on a display wall. The bottom of the display was about eye-level for me, and went up from there. Each faucet had a sign, with the price of the faucet and the features/installation requirements. Trouble is, I had trouble reading the signs. I’m a baby-boomer, with middle-aged vision compensated for with trifocals. In order to read the signs, I had to tip my head way back, attempting to find the part of the visual field where I could read the printing. Some of the signs I couldn’t read at all, and after stretching my neck back until it hurt, I went to Menards and bought my faucet.

Then I went to Barnes and Noble to buy Marly and Me. No trouble finding it on prominent displays, since it’s #1 on the New York Times best-seller list for non-fiction. Then I wandered around the store, browsing the displays on tabletops. I ended up buying Marly, plus 2 more books I didn’t even know I wanted before walking into the store.

Thirdly, I went to Hollywood Video. Multiple copies of new releases were all around the perimeter of the store. In the center of the store were previous new releases, being sold as excess/used merchandise at a fraction of the original cost.

All this reminded me of a class I took in library school at UIUC – Marketing Library Services. A class exercise was looking at libraries through the eyes of a customer. How many books in the library are beyond the field of trifocals, or what treasures are there buried in the stacks that could find new life in a table-top display? And how many customers could we thrill with shorter waiting-lists for best-sellers?

I don’t know how feasible all of this is, but it sure is interesting to ponder.