Self-organizing Stores

I'm wondering: could the same organizing principles that work for community web sites work for retail stores?

If you go into a bookstore, you'll notice that not all books are displayed the same. Some are displayed on tables at the store entrance, or at the entrance to particular sections. Some are displayed on endcaps—that narrow space at the end of a shelf. And some are displayed on shelves with their covers facing the public. And then there's the vast majority of books, coyly showing you just their spines.

And then there's the shelving itself. Some books have clear homes: a book on the Java libraries likely belongs under Java programming. But where does a book on Ruby belong? Programming languages? Web development? Next to Perl and Python? The jewelry section?

Ever wonder what determines where a book goes and how it is displayed.

The basic answer is that most large bookstores ignore the publishers shelving suggestions and decide at head office where each book goes, often based on title alone. This is why you sometimes find a book a long way from where you'd logically expect it to be.

And when it comes to displaying a book more prominently than the standard shelving, there's another simple answer. Publishers pay for promotions, and stores display the books appropriately.

Are either of these practices in the interest of the customer? Perhaps indirectly—bookstores make a lot of money from the fees they charge for promoting books, and it could be argued that those fees keep the stores in business. But in terms of serving their primary purpose, which I'd define as making it easy for customers to find and buy interesting books, I'd say that both practices are suboptimal.

Having a central department decide shelving relies on one person being able to decide the likely audience for each book under their care, and then to decide where the average reader would expect to find that book. Both can at best cater to the typical case, and are bound to lead to frustration.

The reader is also poorly served when it comes to promotional placement. Sometimes it's useful: having a table by the front door piled with the latest Harry Potter is helpful, given that you know that a large number of people will flock in to pick one up. But for the less popular books the practice again moves decisions from the consumer to some central marketing department. Publisher Xyz may want the world to know about a new book, but the world might not be interested.

Online we address these kinds of problems using various self-organizing folksonomy systems: tagging, search, top-ten lists, "readers who bought X also bought Y" and so on.

So could we do the same in the retail world? I think it might be possible.

Say you had a store where you encouraged people to reshelve things. You'd have broad sections (Computers, Photography, and so one), and some cardboard labels you could put on the shelves themselves. People could write their own labels, create their own sections, and move books as they saw fit. If someone really likes a book, they could turn it face out to show others they approve. They could even move the books onto display tables. Not sure if a Photoshop title belongs in Photography or Computers? Put a copy in both sections.

Would such a store work, or would it just be chaos? I frankly don't know. But I suspect that people felt that user-organized sites such as wikis wouldn't work, and Wikipedia and friends have proven that wrong. Flickr and del.icio.us have shown that tagging is a great tool for organizing content. And all these sites have an additional, emergent, property that would be wonderful to see in a bricks and mortar store—they allow serendipitous discoveries. You come across things that delight you that you wouldn't have thought to look for.

Wouldn't that make it worth going to a real store again?

Comments

[Ben Kimball]

I like this idea, but I'm wondering how we'd create the retail analogue of the version control system. Without that, I suspect Wikipedia really wouldn't work.

On the other hand, it's much easier to delete a year's worth of work on Wikipedia than it would be to do the analagous thing (make a huge pile of books in the middle of the floor?) in a retail store. And for a vandalism operation of that scope, it would be hard to stay anonymous (i.e., someone would notice).

Let's simulate this online, as far as is possible, using (say) the Amazon API. ¿Es posible?

[Matthew King]

Such a scheme would suffer from some of the same debilitating weaknesses as Wikipedia.

For instance, conservatives already have trouble with leftist bookstore employees hiding controversial books, or using them to prop up table legs.

The selection bias that operates in bookstore hiring wouldn't be as extreme with the general population of book buyers, however.

[masukomi]

I think the missing ingredient here is RFID tags on all books along with shelves that can read those tags. Because there just aren't enough copies of a book in stock to satisfy all the possible locations people would want you're still going to need to be able to find things in places you wouldn't expect. As long as i can walk over to a computer and it can tell me exactly where the book is i don't really care how the store is organized.

It'd have the side benefit of making your inventory system be constantly up to date.

[motz]

i think you have given the answer already in your own writing: even in an old fashioned bookstore there are people working who are creating their own wiki with some google ads in between. they tag their shelfs as they want it and you are even today wonderingly walking around, as they provide you with some "serendipitous discoveries". i don't see any difference, just a different wording.

[motz]

perdoname. wouldn't it be nice to be able to correct my own typos here? sometimes there are features, i would appreciate, but now i fear i have to live with it.

[Bill Seitz]

The difference is that a wiki page can be linked to from any other wiki page.

But a (copy of a) book can be in only 1 place at a time.

Maybe with an RFID in each book, and an in-store network that customers could access with their WiFi mobile... then they could (a) find a copy of a book no matter where it had been put, and (b) browse alternative connections among books.

[David Bock]

No matter how you slice the organization, you are gingto have an issue when it is time to restock. I wouldn't want to be the poor schmuck who has to run around the store and figure out it this copy goes in Computers or Photography...

There is a huge camera store in New York City called B&H. While the center of the store is filled with accessories like camera bags, all of the interesting stuff is behind the counter... You shop through a catalog, take a tag to an employee, they punch a number into a computer, anda minute later, a basket comes whizzing over your head on those rolly-conveyor belts. You get to look at, touch, and play with your camera stuff right there. I suspect a big part of this is security, but this could be converted into convenience at a bookstore.

Do somthing like that, but take the people out of the loop. If I were sitting in front of a computer surfing an Amazon-line site, where I could see all the reviews, pictures, categories, etc, but then have a little door next to me open up and show me the book - like a replicator from Star Trek - that would be useful. the books can be stored in the basement sorted hoever is most efficient.

I go to a real bookstore to make spontaneous purchases, to 'see' the book, and when I absolutely can't wait a day or two to get it. With the bookstore in the basement and a computer and dumwaiter system, all that real-estate could be used for stuff that would draw me in for other reasons - a coffee shop, a book study group, dramatic readings, etc.

[Sam Aaron]

It's interesting that you write this post now. It was only yesterday when I wandered in to the local Blackwells to check out the computing section. I haven't done that in a couple of years, since Amazon has pretty much answered all my book needs.

I was totally shocked by the sheer reduction in decent books from what I could remember (there were very few O'Reilly books on the shelves, and no pragpress books). All I saw was a complete mess of a set of shelves, with books seemingly placed in random order.

It is nice to be able to touch a book before you buy it, however, I find most of the value is in finding new books, and reading reviews. This is clearly much more difficult when the range of books is severely limited, and the organisation is so poor.

It's going to take something big to steal my custom from Amazon.

[Chris Rimmer]

It is true that books often end up in the wrong place because the bookstores decide themselves where a book should go. I once picked up a copy of a book on the "Unified Modelling Language" for next to nothing because it was in the Language Section along with texts on Linguistics. They had to reduce it because no-one was buying it...