When The Cart Return Is So Far Away

Important Terms:

Color

Fitt’s Law

Operability 

Performance load

Simplicity 

 Everyone’s trip to the grocery store is different. Some people enter the store with the intent on purchasing a few items and others purchase enough groceries to last two  weeks. What  most people have in common at the grocery store is that they are all in a hurry and are looking to get in, get what they need, and get out. Carts are an easy and  convenient method of  transporting large amounts of groceries or heavy items to your vehicle; however, returning the cart seems to be a daunting task for most.

 Large grocery stores or supermarkets like to capitalize on how many customers they can accommodate and will have large parking lots to provide people with a space to  park their  vehicle to shop.

 Cart returns are strategically placed all across the parking lots with each taking the place of one or two parking spaces, depending on the design of the cart return.

 Cart returns are designed to be colorful and usually have a large sign overhead with a shopping cart logo to increase the probability of the customers seeing the cart return over cars or  from far away. The cart return is designed with simplicity in mind. The designers of the cart return understand that people are in a hurry to get home with their groceries and aim to  make the process of returning your cart as easy as possible. The bright color is inviting and catches the eye of the customer. This relays affordance because the color draws attention to  the cart return. Signs that are easy to understand should not have contradicting images or too many (or few) words, depending on the task. Using an image that is similar to the  shopping cart provides pictorial realism. Anyone can easily understand that the cart return is designed for dropping off your cart once you have finished using it or to pick one up on  your way into the store. The operability of the cart return is easy for anyone to use.

 The only issue with cart returns is the scarcity of cart returns. The performance load for returning your cart is high  due to stores not wanting to saturate the parking lot with cart returns, losing out on one or two parking spaces.  Each aisle of a parking lot may contain one or two cart returns, which increases the walk for people in the very back  of the lot, in the middle of the lot, and at the front spaces. People will operate under Fitt’s Law, the time or distance  required to accomplish a task is directly correlated with the probability of the action. The further away a person has  to walk to return the cart will greatly decrease the behavior of walking to return the cart, which means abandoned  carts everywhere! To remedy this issue, grocery stores can include tasks within the job description of bagging  personnel to walk people to their vehicles and collect the cart as soon as the contents are removed. Grocery stores  can also increase the amount of cart returns in each parking lot. 

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