Rarely have I seen a store that used marketing so efficiently to unconciously make people buy. “O Mundo Fantastico Da Sardinha Portuguesa” is a a store located on Praça Rossio (Rossio square) in Lisbon which seels sardines in box. Boxes are colorful, bear the mention of a year and a few facts about that year. Different colors are associated to different decades.
O Mundo Fantastico Da Sardinha Portuguesa uses several marketing tricks that lead to impulsive buying behavior. One of them is the collection effect which we have analyzed in this article. It’s an amazing trick, rarely used by retailers, but extremely powerful if you have similar proucts available in different colours or slight shape variations. Make sure to read this article if you want to know more.
In short, O Mundo Fantastico Da Sardinha Portuguesa succeeds in turning what marketers would call an undifferentiated product (sardines) into something special. This is the power of marketing, isn’t it? we have found 3 keys factors that explain the success of O Mundo Fantastico Da Sardinha Portuguesa that we discuss below.
Key success factor #1: location, location, location
The 1st key success factor of this store is (like always in the retail industry) its location. The Rossio square is a very touristic area of Lisbon and the store is located on the best side of the square with the biggest flow of pedestrians (keep in mind that micro variations exist whatever the area which explain why we pay special attention to mapping precisly the flows when carrying out market research for the retail industry)
Key success factor #2: differentiated customer experience
the 2nd key success factor is the differentiation of the store itself. It provides a funny customer experience with employees dressed up and attractions like in a circus. This store tells a story (although the story is not reamlly related to the product itself).
Key success factor #3: the collection effect
the 3rd key success factor (perhaps the most subtle and difficult to detect for non-specialists) is what we called the “collection effect” (we described and theorized this effect in this article). It consists in arranging product to create a sense of similarity. This helps consumers quickly understand how the product range is structured, reduce cognitive effort and makes choice easier. In the O Mundo Fantastico Da Sardinha Portuguesa store, the sardine boxes are arranged by year and by color (each decade has a specific color). It’s therefore very easy to understand the store layout, the product range, and customers quickly understand that a sardine box makes a perfect gift for someone born on the year written on the box (and you’ll have something funny to tell about the store itself).
Conclusion: this is marketing genius
Don’t be fooled. The sardines inside the boxes are all the same. That’s what makes this store a marketing-made success. Take a common product, design a great story, create a memorable experience and a funny store around that one product, and you’ll have a success recipe that, in my opinion, is pure genius.
Posted in Marketing.
