Why retail theatre is
here to stay?
With increasing competition at one end and more retail points
beginning to look like each other, the consumer has ever increasing choices of
where to shop and what to expect in every category from retailers in general.
The moot point for brick and mortar retailers is the need to not just bring
back customers more frequently but also positively influence their in-store journey,
and in general have the ability to influence choices through information,
interesting forms of engagement or entertainment. All retailers will tell you
that this is easier said than done. What with shrinking attention spans, time
constrained lives, traffic overload on roads etc, it is tough to bring
customers back to stores in any case. To top this, with increasing penetration and
convenience of online retail, the scenario for brick and mortar retailers
starts looking even tougher.
It is in the above context, that one needs to examine the
significance of retail theatre.
To me, retail theatre is the essence of going beyond the
mundane and infusing elements that breathe literally life into a physical
store. These elements could be physical, audio-visual or digital or a
combination of all of these.
The physical elements could be – product display led,
engagement or activity led or even audio-visual led.
Imagine walking into a departmental store – first into the
kids section to pick up something for your little star, before venturing into
the evening wear section for ladies or for that matter men and then into the
home furnishing section. What if, instead of standard uni-tonal music, the
audio experience could be different in every section? The chirping of birds and
animals in the kids department, followed by mellow music in the ladies wear
section and then by a more aggressive sporty music in the men’s section. Would
it not enhance the experience for customers and make every section seem real
and lively.
Now imagine being in a food store with endless aisles of packaged
food products all around you and yet you stand there confused, not sure of what
to buy. Imagine a kiosk in the midst of
these aisles, where a cheerful promoter is happily demonstrating a new range of
cooking sauces and pastes. Don’t you automatically gravitate towards it? Or a
section where the product displays are not on the standard mid floor racks but
are displayed loose like in an old style wholesale market? Does it suddenly not
cue freshness better than any packaged product ever can. You can not only touch
but smell, feel and sample too!
Now think of walking into a furniture store. Rows and rows of
endless furniture and furnishings -neatly divided by sections. You start
browsing when your eye falls on an oversized screen where you notice one of
India’s foremost interior experts sharing practical tips to make your house
more beautiful and engaging with customers live!
Or an apparel store with loads of clothes and a line of
customers in front of the trial rooms awaiting their turn. Replace this
scenario with a Magic Mirror (recently introduced by a leading department store
chain in India where customers need not physically try on products. Agreed, It’s
a novelty but more than that, its amazingly relevant for the category too.
Digital disruption is another way of grabbing consumer
attention. But digital disruption done from the perspective of analytics is
likely to be less successful for offline shoppers unless it is specific, in
real time and customized for individual shoppers while they shop. For instance,
getting personalized offers through the deployment of beacons in stores can be
both informative and engaging. Similarly there could be other forms of digital
intervention in stores that make the journey more pleasurable and remind a
customer what they could be missing if they were shopping online.
All of the above are real life instances where businesses are
employing retail theatre to disrupt the
journey of a customer inside the store and making it more engaging, more enjoyable
and giving the customer a solid reason to return back. One can think of
infinite more ways to create and enhance the customers’ journey in stores. But
whatever is chosen needs to be scalable and relevant to the business one is so
seeking to enhance. These are things that the customer is more likely to
remember, talk about and then come back to the store again for.
No comments:
Post a Comment