5 Ways the Retail Experience Can Improve According to Experts
#1 The experience in the physical space must be more than what is offered in the digital space. According to Massimo Volpe, CEO of Global Retail Alliance, “The level of interaction, the level of opportunities of creating this relationship with your customer, in the physical world, is much stronger than the digital. I mean, so whenever you build up something in the real world you need always to rely on that. I mean, from the economic perspective and from the strategy perspective, remember that the cost of a customer in the digital world is much higher than in a physical world, for the simple reason that it's much easier to create a strong and loyal relationship when you meet someone in person, than when you're just behind a screen... And on top of that, you always have to remember that whenever a shopper is coming in your store, that person expects to have a sort of a unique experience." To listen to the full interview, please visit the link here.
#2 Art adds a sensorial aspect to a customer’s journey. "What I really see happening in interesting terms is when the brand understands that for the younger customer population, what art can add to the brand's point of view is the experiential and the sensorial dimension that the printed communication or the social network cannot provide. Because this population receives the message in a sensorial way, in an experiential way. They, let me say, pay for the experience and the sensorial stimuli. It's not just something contextual, which is important, to sell the product. In so many cases, it is the product. So, being involved in a performance with a choreographer, an artist, and the brand is something they can buy. I'm sure that we will have cinema productions by a luxury brand very soon; a luxury Netflix from a brand or a group. It's not something that far from our present. And there we could buy and pay for experiential contents, which also can happen physically." - Luca Marchetti, senior lecturer at IFM & Sorbonne. To listen to the full interview, please visit the link here.
#3 Sound elevates the entire retail experience. “What's interesting about sound is there's just very few applications where sound is the only input that you are getting. So, voice assistance is one of the few where all we can really, we're all you're hearing is sound, everything everywhere else sound is an ingredient. If you walk into a retail store, Manmade music is cool is not that you walk out and you say, wow, the soundtrack in there was really awesome. It's that you walk out of the retail store and you say, I love that store. That was a really fantastic experience. Sound is something that should be elevating the whole of the experience on a subconscious level.” - Lauren McGuire, President of Man Made Music. To listen to the full interview, please visit the link here.
#4 Fragrance develops memories that creates a very emotional experience for the customer. According to Carissa Barrett, VP of retail at Byredo, “Everything in fragrance is very emotional. I felt like when I switched over from ready-to-wear and I started Byredo and I'm on the floor and clients were coming in and they wanted to talk about their smell memories. Like, this smells like my mom's cooking when I was a child. This smells like my wedding day. This smells like somebody I know. And they're trying to articulate these smell memories while they're smelling the fragrances. And there's something so beautiful and unique about that experience, not only that the client is having, that I'm having with the client and that we're having together. Because you're creating these memories for this person that they'll never forget that smell.” To listen to the full interview, please visit the link here.
#5 Lighting makes or breaks the experience and elements of home create a sense of safety and comfort in a retail space. Architect Donald Rattner said, “You know, I ask store owners and so forth, designers to look at one thing first. It's gotta be the lighting, because if it's off, it really just kills the experience for the individual, both, you know, literally and subliminally." Not only can lighting determine the outcome of the experience, but elements of home could play a crucial role as well. “One of the post-Covid movements that will arise in part because of this podcast is residential design, where we see more aspects of home coming into the retail space as a way to create that sense of safety and of comfort and of wellbeing that we associate with home." To listen to the full interview, please visit the link here.
written by Maria Soubbotina
