I think some people have a Transitional Personality.
Often at work, my co-workers will sit in the booth and wait quietly for a “front”, the ticket stub that tells a valet driver where and what car to bring out. But once they actually run for the door, the suddenly strike up a conversation out of the blue, standing in the doorway keeping everybody else from getting in or out.
Also, some people just don’t seem to have any courtesy and long term goals.
They’ll get off an escalator, and instead of moving off to the side, they’ll just stand where the steps spit them out and fumble through their newspaper or pocketbook.
The food court at my office building has a number of fast food outlets grouped around a central eating area, with a wide access aisle separating them. People generally line up at an angle so they don’t block the aisle or access to the next place, EXCEPT at Subway, where they always line up straight across the aisle like this! (Actually, I suppose the surprising thing is that they don’t do so at the other places as well.)
Even if you for some reason are having a conversation at a ‘choke point’ and recognize it and want to do something about it, it is still very difficult to move the conversation elsewhere without awkwardly throwing the interaction off balance. It really discourages people from moving, even if they know they are blocking traffic.
People who find this thread interesting might enjoy Paco Underhill’s book Why We Buy. Underhill is a consultant to businesses who want to fine-tune their spatial functionality, appeal, and efficiency. He’s famous for his studies of consumer behavior *in situ * (as opposed to just polling people and relying on self-reported consumer data). The book is full of interesting observations and insights, such as the fact that the vast majority of us will, upon entering a store, stop or slow down to a near-halt within, IIRC, the first 15’ of the door (which he’s termed “the decompression zone,”) while we look around and get our bearings. What’s more, upon resuming our forward motion, 90% of us will circulate through the store in a counter-clockwise direction.
Weird.
But to relate this to the OP: Underhill would no doubt advise a retailer that this is how people behave (forming a choke point near the entrance), so just accomodate the public in the way you map your retail space, and select and position items accordingly for this opportunity…
Because we’re not just sheep. We’re sheep with credit cards.
People instinctively want to control choke points to gain a strategic advantage on the battle map. Enemy numbers are effectively reduced because they cannot bring all that force to bear in the limited space that is available.
