The Bigger, Better Box
by Wentworth Sutton,assistant vice-principal, Mitchell Hepburn Collegiate Institute, Don Mills, and president emeritus, Semiologico-Hermeneutic Institute of Toronto.
In an earlier article I pointed out how enterprising Canadian businesspeople are exploiting the findings of contemporary psychology to improve the profitability of their businesses. Specifically, they are turning them into Skinner boxes. You remember Skinner boxes – the devices in which rats press levers (or pigeons peck keys) and as a consequence receive food. The delivery of the food contingent on the pressing or pecking to reinforces it – that is, it becomes more frequent.
The example I used in that article was the donut shop. Donut shops have reversed the traditional order of events at a restaurant. Instead of eating and then paying, at a donut shop we pay and then eat. Where before paying was not reinforced, now it is. I also noted how other businesses were making use of reinforcement scheduling effects, and how this all appeals to a deep puritan strain in Canadian culture.
Well, I was in a donut shop the other day. In fact, I was in a Tim Horton's branch (or, as we now say, outlet) which used to be across the street from a branch/outlet of another chain, Coffee Time. The Tim's branch, though, has driven the Coffee Time branch out of business, twice. The former Coffee TIme is now a sub joint.
If you are familiar with the Horton's and Coffee Time chains, you will know that the delivery of food in these two chains is accomplished in much the same way. You go in, someone takes your order, you get your food, and you pay. The difference between the two chains is that at Coffee Time the process requires a staff of at most two, who manage to get you your food promptly, while at Tim's it requires a staff of seven or eight, who do not. It usually takes longer to get a coffee and donut from the huge staff at a Tim's than from the tiny staff at a Coffee Time.
Nevertheless, Tim Horton's has ruled the Canadian donut market since Moses was in the fire brigade. And the reason, paradoxically enough, is that the staff are so inefficient. Because they receive slower service, customers have to wait longer and are therefore reinforced for being in the store (from what I observed in Tim's the other day, I would say that a large part of the reinforcement consists of being amused by the disorganization of the staff). Similarly, the customers waiting in the long lines for the takeout window which snake around most Tim's branches are going to be reinforced for waiting in line at the takeout window. All of that reinforcement increases the probability that they will make the response of entering the store or getting in the line for the window.
Canadian retailers in general exploit variations on this tactic, one of which was discussed by Jason Capodimonte in an article published here earlier this year. These variations have been perfected by Canada's leading retailer, the Hudson's Bay Company – those guys haven't been around for 332 years for nothing, you know.
These tactics are, first, not to have stock, and second, not to provide service. You are probably asking, how can not having stock to sell or people willing to sell it help you make sales? The answer is simple – people get reinforced for staying in the store, and the probability that they will buy something increases (Chapters and Indigo put armchairs in their stores explicitly for that reason). You also save money on staff and on their training.
Jason described another benefit of these tactics – the retailer can provide what it wants to provide rather than what the customer wants to be provided. Eventually, if the retailer is aptient enough, the customers will have to settle for what they can get rather than what they would like to get. When I go into a big box bookstore I don't want to buy big books on big paper for big prices, but I'm not offered anything else (for further discussion of this practice of the big bookstores, see the earlier articles by E. N. Beej and St. Clair Carr). As St. Clair would put it, if you want your literary fix you've got to buy what the dealers got and pay what they want you to pay.
As I pointed out in my earlier article, these practices also appeal to the Canadian psyche:
Canadians hate to enjoy themselves. It makes them feel guilty. Worse, it makes them feel American. Better to consume a doughnut in haste and discomfort than to enjoy one unhurriedly and at ease. Let those vulgar Americans luxuriate in their Krispy Kremes; such delights of the flesh are not for us. We prefer to give of ourselves for the greater good of transnational capitalism.That of course is why Canadians never complain about any of this. The fellow in front of me in the line at Tim's the other day merely smiled as the staff botched his stunningly simple order. He knew that suffering made him a better person, and he may also have realized that his suffering was making Tim's a better corporation.So the next time you're in a store and can't get served, smile. Be happy. You're helping Canadian business operate more effectively and, strange as it may seem, more efficiently. And, what's more important in this age of self-gratification, you're satisfying your own deep psychological needs. And maybe that's why the United Nations has repeatedly rated the quality of Canadian life as the best in the world.
The Bigger, Better Box © Coolth, 2002
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