From November 2003 – January 2004, Merillat commissioned Envirosell, an industry leader in retail shopping behavior research, to conduct quantitative research on what people do when shopping model home kitchens. In addition, Murphy Marketing/TRENDTOWN conducted observational qualitative research that focused on why new home shoppers do what they do in a model home. This study helped to identify shoppers’ emotional motivators and triggers, plus their likes and dislikes of kitchen features.
The study included 1,000 hours of videotape recording 323 shopping groups plus interviews with 153 shoppers in 28 model homes, ranging from $200,000 to $450,000, in Chicago, Denver, Raleigh, Tampa and Phoenix. According to the survey, 51% of the shoppers were planning to buy in the next 6 months, 34% weren’t planning to buy in the

immediate future and 15% were there merely for decorating ideas. Couples and families accounted for over 70% of the model home traffic. Observing new home shoppers in these model homes uncovered specific shopping behaviors. The shopping pattern fits into three segments: 1) Vista View, 2) Examination and 3) The Test Drive.

Vista View: The first impression a shopper gets of the model home is through a vista view. The vista view occurs when visitors pause and take in the entire view of the kitchen and adjoining living space before approaching the kitchen. Shoppers want to fully absorb the space to determine whether they could live in this home. On average, a vista view lasted 18 seconds. (There’s not much time to make an impression.) The average total time spent in a home was 8 minutes, 58 seconds. The time spent in the kitchen was 1 minute and 23 seconds (the most in any room). The two most popular rooms were the master bedroom and the kitchen (78% chose the master bedroom; 64% chose the kitchen, 55% the living room and 26% the dining room).

Examination: Within the kitchen, the cabinetry was the most shopped part of the room (54%), followed by the countertops (50%) and the pantries (50%). The remaining items were appliances (26%), drawers (16%), sink (13%), props (10%), windows (10%) and flooring (10%). Shoppers investigated cabinetry by looking (56%), touching (24%) and opening (20%). The areas around the appliances were identified as “hot zones” of the kitchen, meaning they were the most heavily shopped. (If you want to get credit for upgrades, put them here.) Corner storage and areas around the microwave were the most frequently shopped.

The Test Drive: If the model home passed the first two shopping phases, the new home shopper test drove the kitchen layout. Shoppers were often observed mimicking the process of preparing a meal to test the functionality of the kitchen. As a builder, finding ways to pull the shopper into the kitchen for closer inspection will increase your chances of selling the home. In the kitchen, the features shoppers asked for include: staggered-height cabinets, walk-in pantries, freestanding hutches, islands, decorative hardware, glazes, cooking grottos, decorative end panels, tilt-out sink trays, base wastebasket cabinets, roll-out trays, drawer dividers and solid-surface or stone countertops.