Behavioral and Cognitive Methods to Assess Users and Assist Physical Point of Sale Experience Design

Abstract

The rise of digital stores and new shopping formats require designers and retailers to rethink the role of physical point of sale and the experience they offer to users. According to some reports on consumer behavior, carried out by Global Data in 2017, physical stores, when compared to the digital ones, have been losing significant space in people’s daily lives in the last decade, seen by many as the era of the customer. Inadequate to the current users’ needs, many brands that still offer traditional experiences at their stores and not take into account, for instance, sensory stimulation and technology, end up becoming obsolete and having difficulty navigating in the current fast-moving market. Now with the recent Coronavirus pandemic situation, consumers seem to have drastically shifted to e-commerce since online shopping appears to be the safest and fastest way to purchase goods or services. This exploratory research seeks to investigate and compare, in the existing literature, both in human factors and in related areas, the main cognitive and behavioral methods that can be applied in the evaluation of users as in the process of designing experience at the physical point of sale.