The retail industry is a booming industry where consumers spend a lot of money every year. With consumer spending on the rise year after year, there has been a need to examine the customer's interaction with the retail store itself. Every part of a retail store, such as your local Abercrombie & Fitch or The Buckle, is visually looked upon by the customer. The customer, in one way or another, responds to what they see consciously or unconsciously. When examining the store as an interface there are major areas that the consumer sees. These include such things as traffic flow, fixtures, lighting, graphics and signs, and the actual merchandising of product on the walls, shelves and tables.
             Like any interface, retail store setup takes initial planning. Most stores will outline the demographics of the community in which the store is located. Such things they will ask themselves are:
             • What age group do we want to target?
             • What average income to we want to pursue?
             Most stores will also look at their competitors and see what market is not represented so they can try and fill that void. Whatever approach a retail store takes, a better understanding of who they are appealing to and the message they want to convey will help to make their displays more focused, effective and easier to construct.
             Traffic flow is one of the most researched interactions between a customer and the store. Research has shown that nearly 90 percent of all people, when entering a store, will turn right and walk through the store in a counterclockwise direction. This is because most people are right-handed, which in turn also makes them right-footed. One of the best known examples which utilize this finding is supermarkets. Almost all supermarkets have you enter, go right, work in a counterclockwise motion, and finally pay at the left part of the store from where you entered. Customer traffic patterns are also influenced by shapes in...