Why can't customers JUST SHOP!

Hello.
Are any sims buying items from your store? If you are having an issue with no one buying anything, take all the items off from being on sale. Then put them back onto sale again and see if that helps the issue.

Try lowering the markup percentages and see if that helps.

I'll give that a try soon. They really love to socialize though...

This annoys me too. I am making a profit but my counter is besieged with a dozen Sims all talking to one another, getting in the way of the till and at least two of them are that dratted clown who have to be asked to leave but come back again. My Sim comes back exhausted and I feel that GTW is a waste of time.

Why cannot we have a counter that is enclosed so that only the owner and staff can get into. Keep customers in their place in front of the counter.

Has anyone tried asking a customer to leave? I havent but I am curious! Off to test!

I had this teen who was in all the time and never bought anything. I asked her to leave and she did after having a bit of a hissy fit. But she was back, again and again.

My first retail store was/is an art gallery and painting shop. It went smoothly at first; a couple of customers here and there. But then when my business started booming, more customers show, and they all start to just group chat with each other--including my sim and her employee! This then blocks areas where a purchasing sim cannot enter, makes sales dreadfully slow (my poor employee working 10 hours a day, and this is the limit!) , and to make it worse, the first batch of people all of a sudden want to finally purchase an item at the same time! This makes it a nightmare and a game of Who Bought the Most Expensive Item just to make a sale!

I know it has been mentioned a lot, and I hate to sound redundant on other people's complaints, but this retail business aspect of the game needs fixing like:
-A cashiering system (customers can buy more than one item per visit and place them in a bag like TS2 and finally form a line at the register to check out)
-More browsing and less group chatting!
-A ticket system per your choosing of time (since my customers obviously are loitering with other sims most of the time!)
-Retail interactions should NOT add or subtract relationship points; my sim is literally friends with all her customers because of this!

Also, do your customers seem to be only a select group of people or the same customers? I have no variety in customers at all!

Hello @1upMushrooms
Some simmers have posted that the longer they have owned their store, the more variety in the customers that they have had. Also they have opened at different times of the day, and that brought different sim customers.

yes, most of the sims showing up on a retail lot are just socializing
only around 10% is real customers

& nothing helps, it's how this set up is programmed, way too much socialization & way too few buying
the tryout to lower the markup just doesn't provide enough profit for the sim so that's not the solution
& as far i experienced it, it doesn't have any impact on the amount of buying, it stays low even with a low markup

since it's all a pretend game, unlike it was in TS2, where sims indeed bought objects which then actually ended up in their inventories when played, so since TS4 sims don't actually buy anything, why can't they buy more stuff
it can't work right that it takes literally 8 sim hours io to sell just one object :confused:

All of this. And I especially agree that sims should be able to browse on their own too, maybe have the sales bar start going to show they're interested. I mean, right now it's so generic, it's not like it matters really. The personality of the sims makes no impact on if they buy or what they want to buy, so why not just program them purely as customers when they're in the shop?

This. Why would they go into a shop to socialize. I don't recall going to a store just to socialize. When they go into a shop they should be shopping. There are other places just to socialize.