A study of fitting-room congestion in a retail clothing chain shows that adding just one employee per store to fetch items for customers and clean out the changing rooms increased hourly sales by $400 during peak times, according to a team led by Saravanan Kesavan of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Congestion creates even greater congestion in fitting rooms as customers bring bigger and bigger piles of clothing to try on. That’s why the impact of additional labour in the fitting rooms is much larger than that of added labor in any other part of a clothing store, the researchers say.

(Source: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, December 15th , 2014