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This report introduces Atlas, a model that accurately describes shopper behavior across a series of supermarkets in terms of traffic across the store, share of shopping at various locations, resulting purchases, and the amount of time shoppers invest in these activities. The value of the tool to measure the in-store “audience” for advertisers is assessed as is its utility for allowing store management to evaluate a wide range of “what if” movements of categories to alternate locations, with alternate display sizes. This report focuses on center-of-store aisles but points the way to deployment for the full store, including end-caps and perimeter displays.

The in-store audience is only superficially similar to other audiences because the dominant purpose of this “audience” is specifically to make immediate purchases. Efficiency is a major consideration to the shopper audience. Here we consider one store design/layout issue, aisleness, that can negatively impact shopper efficiency. Then we consider the empirical generalization that the faster shoppers spend, the more the store will sell. And finally, we consider how in-store digital media can accelerate shopping speed, and thereby total store sales.

There are on the order of one quadrillion (1 followed by 15 zeros) media exposures annually in stores around the world. The question of how those exposures are presently allocated and the current dynamics of in-store media are addressed in this article by examining media exposure in a typical supermarket. Thinking of shoppers in a store as an “audience” in the traditional media sense can introduce some intriguing possibilities. The long tail analogy is apt for shopper marketing in the sense of the small number of products that produce very large unit sales, but there also is a variety of media to attract shoppers9 attention in stores, which differ greatly in both exposures and effectiveness. This article points the way to an objective view of this crowded and complex field.