Results after observations at Sokos Winklund

During the camp, we decided to go to Sokos in Turku to observe the customers and their purchase habits.

Firstly, the department store gives a bad image cause by the organization of the store. Indeed, there is no indications, no demarcations between the different sections and we can find, at different floors, many times the same brand (this is the case for Esprit).

Moreover, which surprised me is that there is no service. There are many salesmen in the department store but no one come toward the customers to welcome them or to ask if they need some help. Thus, it is the customer who goes to ask something directly to the salesman.

Between 17:00 and 19:00, there aren’t a lot of customers. Most of them stay at the first floor with all the cosmetics and the beauty products.

Here, the more regular customers are the 18 – 25 year olds women. Most of the time, there are in group and their purpose is not to buy but to try all the products they like. On average, a group can stay between 10 and 20 minutes in the different sections to try different cosmetic brands.

At this floor, we can also find some senior women who buy some expensive perfumes.

Men are also present on this floor. However, contrary to the women, they know what they want to buy and are very quick; they don’t spend much time in Sokos. I noticed that most of the men bought one or two products.

In the woman department, we can find some alone women, in the middle age, who are here to try a lot of clothes and buy some. We can also find some “mother-daughter” group, from the middle class, who are looking for “cheap” clothes.

In the second floor we can find men department. The customers here are some alone men in the young adult group or in the senior group. The middle age group is also present but frequently, the man comes with his wife.

In the third floor, there are just some customers. Here, we can find the kid department and the home decoration department.

In the kid department, the customers are mothers without their child or mothers, in the middle age group, with their child in infancy. Here, the majority of the mothers buy something for their child.

In the home decoration department, the typical customer is the 40 year old woman. She buys some little things for her home and one in three women buy something in this section.

To conclude, we can find different kind of customers in this department store. The problem of Sokos is a real issue because even after the work hours, the department store is empty. Moreover, the customers don’t buy in bulk: the majority of them buy just one or two things.