The Value of Signs

Professor James Kellaris is the James S. Womack/Gemini Corporation Chair of Signage and Visual Marketing
at the Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. He presented the results of the following study at the National Signage Research & Education Conference held last October at the University of Cincinnati, under the auspices of the Signage Foundation, Inc.

A new shop recently opened on the other side of town. When a friend told Janice about it, Janice was eager to check it out. But when she drove to the unfamiliar neighborhood to look for the shop, she passed right by it. After several attempts to find the location her friend described, Janice eventually got frustrated and abandoned her search. If you design, make, sell or install signs, you can probably guess exactly why this happened.
When Janice told me this story, I replied, “You have this experience in common with 155,555,810 people in the U. S. last year, and 172,803,405 people in North America.” Surprised by my response, she asked how I knew this. “Because 100,218 people told me so,” I said.
It’s true. My university work entailed analyzing
data from the BrandSpark/Better Homes and Gardens American Shopper Study™, which included items regarding the value of signs to consumers.
Our college’s partnership with BrandSpark Intl. on this annual survey bolsters signage research, because the sample includes more than 100,000 North American households, including 63,664 U.S. consumers ages
18 to 65+ from all 50 states. The U.S. sample is stratified by gender, age and Census region, and weighted to conform to U.S. MRI principal-shopper data. In other words, the data accurately represent adult consumers – real people who spend real money at real businesses.
Survey items, regarding the economic value of signage to businesses and consumers, include signage quality’s impact on driving traffic to stores, how shoppers draw quality inferences about stores from signage, and the perceived usefulness of outdoor and indoor signage (versus other media) for evaluating new products.
The survey documents that 49.7% of consumers have driven by and failed to find a business because the signage was too small or unclear, and it describes these consumers’ characteristics. Women are slightly more prone (2%) than men, but this is expected because women still do most household shopping.
More surprising is how signage-communication failures vary across age groups. Younger shoppers wouldn’t miss hard-to-read signs. Wrong. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of women 18-24 years old reported drive-by failures. In this age group, we suspect distraction and inexperience account for the results rather than visual acuity.
Does quality matter? The short answer is “yes”. Across genders, age groups and regions, 29% of American consumers report having been drawn into unfamiliar stores based on the quality of its signage. I suspect that the actual proportion is much higher, as the 29% are just those who are consciously aware that this happens.
Our findings show more than half of the 18-24 age group reports having been drawn into an unfamiliar store on the basis of signage. Some regional differences were also observed, with consumers in western states being slightly more prone to this effect.
More than a third of American consumers (34.5%) report having made quality assumptions about a business on the basis of clear and attractive signage. No gender
or regional differences were found, but consumers 18-24 appear more likely to link a store’s quality to its signage quality. Whereas younger shoppers have less experience upon which to draw, they are more reliant on heuristic cues to make judgments.
Signs vs. other media. How does signage’s useful-
ness compare with other communication media as an information source about new products? The survey asked respondents to rate the perceived usefulness of various media, including television, radio, newspapers, etc. Although television was rated as the most useful source of new-product information, indoor signage ties with magazines as the second most useful source, and outdoor signage ranked third, beating out radio, online and newspaper ads.
What can I tell my customers? Signs have value. You’ve always known that, but now you have some compelling facts to back that up. Signs drive traffic to businesses. Unclear signage leads to loss of business. Quality matters – not only because communication effectiveness depends on it, but because customers draw quality inferences about businesses from their signage. These claims aren’t based on entrepreneurial intuition, expert opinion or anecdotal evidence from experience. They are now objectively documented facts.
Your comments about this research – positive or critical – are most welcome. Please consider dropping me a line or shooting me an email. UC’s Lindner College of Business and its signage professor seek to be useful and relevant to our industry partners! You can reach me at james.kellaris@uc.edu. n