Green transfer
The Gruen transfer is a confusion effect, named after the builder of the first shopping mall , Victor Gruen , that can be seen among visitors to large shopping centers.
definition
When the first covered, two-story shopping center was built in the city of Southdale (near Minneapolis ) in 1956 , it offered the ideal opportunity to observe and analyze the shopping behavior of customers. The psychologists involved in these studies found that the size and appearance of such a mall have a special effect on customers. The moment a customer enters a shopping center and is overwhelmed by the size, the deliberate confusion and the glamor of the shopping center, he forgets his original goals and becomes susceptible to sales manipulation. He becomes a spontaneous buyer .
features
The green transfer can be recognized by the following behavior in affected persons:
- absent look,
- slower walking speed,
- decreased resistance to manipulation.
application
When building shopping centers or casinos , an attempt is made to produce the effect described by presenting the shopping center as a closed world where possible, in which life takes place within its own time . Shopping time is separated from real time, for example, by completely roofing the building and using artificial light , which creates the same ambient brightness at all times. The targeted use of music and background noise also contributes to the green transfer.
After finding out that this construction of a shopping center can cause claustrophobic fears in some people , there is now a move towards building buildings with glass roofs and making them more open. In order to create your own time, artificial light is used to compensate for the lack of daylight in the evening. Other methods of disorienting visitors are also used, for example a repetitive design of the individual shops or poorly structured building plans.
The green transfer makes visitors more susceptible to further manipulation with the basic goals of keeping them inside the mall longer and selling more goods.