The Optimal Climate in Department Stores

Abstract

The optimal effective temperature for department stores was obtained by collecting temperature and humidity data in six such stores during one full year and by asking several members of the sales staff to give their preference at different periods of the year. Four of the stores gave very good agreement regarding the desirable effective temperature. One store had a different optimum, probably due to local differences in preference, and one store failed to indicate an optimum. This failure could be interpreted in terms of the average optimum derived from the other department stores. Recommendations for optimal effective temperatures for department stores are given. The evaluation of the store climate by the customers did not appear to differ greatly from that of the sales personnel.A large firm in the Netherlands with many branch establishments consulted the Netherlands Institute for Preventive Medicine concerning the temperature which might be taken as optimal for the sales areas in its department stores. The original request did not specify whether this temperature was to be optimal for commodities, for the staff, or for the customers. Several time-consuming attempts were made to find a relation between the daily air temperatures or the dew-point temperatures and corresponding cash takings, but this effort did not yield any positive results. Since the number of customers influences both sales and indoor climate, a careful examination was made of comparable days with approximately the same turnover. A group of such days was found to include both high and low external temperatures.It was therefore concluded that the customers' buying is independent of climatic conditions outside the store. The investigation was then directed towards determining the optimal climate for the staff, taking their subjective findings as a criterion. This paper deals with the procedure followed and the results obtained with this approach. The questionnaire, which will be discussed in detail, included a question which asked how, in the opinion of the staff, the customers evaluated the climate in the store. Although this part of the investigation did not yield quantitative data, an impression was nevertheless obtained of how the customers rate the climate of a department store. Method and ResultsA. Climatic Data.-In six branch department stores in different parts of the country, recording thermo-hygrographs were placed in the sales areas. The position was chosen arbitrarily but could be expected to give a fair mean of the indoor climate. The height above the floor was approximately 2 metres. The instruments, which were kept in the same place during one entire year, recorded the temperature and the relative humidity continuously for periods of a week, so that from each department store approximately 50 sheets were collected. This paper describes only those data and procedures which provided the final results. Other relations found between outdoor climate, indoor climate, season, and cash takings are omitted.The air temperature record showed...

Optimal Climate Change: Economics and Climate Science Policy Histories (from Heuristic to Normative)

“…One example can be found in research from the 1930s through the 1960s exploring the optimal climate for sales in department stores using a set of quantitative and qualitative analyses from data provided by customers and staff. 22 An optimal climate for maximizing consumption could be hypothesized and then created in-store.…”