THE FUTURE OF SHOPPING
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
– Arthur C. Clarke
The shopping experience of the future
Will your shopping experience in the future be different from what it is today? The answer to this question is an absolute yes. Almost every aspect of how customers currently shop will be transformed in the coming years. In fact, the changes have already started to happen…
According to the Forbes magazine (2019), the shopping experience is divided into three main areas namely the customer experience, the transaction-less experience and the sustainability. It’s a fact, customers always want more from brands, and as a result, companies must constantly work on their offerings.
The customers want personalized shopping experiences with brands and desire to build a special relationship instead of just purchase products. Basically, they don’t simply buy a product anymore, they buy an experience. And it goes further. The consumers expect brands to understand them and their needs, be more transparent and show that they care about them. Many brands already have understood that moving towards an ‘on-demand’ frictionless customer experience is a necessity. Moreover, customers also seek for cash-less, and even further, transaction-less experiences. Companies such as the giants Amazon or Uber have quickly reacted to this demand by paving the way to the transaction-less shops like with the Amazon Go store for instance.
Amazon Go store:
A complete digitalization of all commerces will thus gradually appear in the next few years. People won’t need wallets to shop anymore since companies will digitize their whole shopping experiences, from the moment people enter a shop until they leave it, by for example installing automatic payments, and removing queues.
Consequently, the existing border between retail store and websites will slowly disappear, and a blurring between those two concepts will started to grow thanks to immersive digital experiences.
In addition to that, companies are now more than ever aware of the fact that people care about the environment and want brands to be more environmentally friendly and responsible. Indeed, younger generations want to deal with brands which stand for sustainability and improve their practices towards eco-friendly and greener policies. Companies which succeed in making efforts in this direction will now be the ones that also succeed in connecting with their consumers. This is the reason why sustainability will have an important impact on businesses, from the way to create products to the shopping experience and the marketing strategy of brands.
These trends will more than likely influence the future of the shopping experience and brands which deeply understand how to offer their customers a connected, socially responsible and frictionless experience will probably dominate the retail world and stand out from their competitors.
Focus on customer experience
Customer experience is defined as a multidimensional construct that focuses on a customer’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial and social responses to a firm’s offering during the entire customer’s purchase journey (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). It means that when brands want to reshape or build innovative and creative customer experiences, they must consider these 5 factors in their strategies. The experience in the stores must appeal to all the senses of consumers in order to satisfy their evolving purchase behavior.
Nowadays, companies are thus aware of the importance of creating impactful customer experiences. It is even become a top priority for businesses. According to the Marketing Science Institute (2016), one of the most important challenges in the coming years is to improve customer experience and engagement. Businesses that succeed in understanding the needs of the consumers, improving their level of satisfaction and using innovation the right way at the right time, possess a powerful weapon against their competitors.
The last two decades have been marked by increasingly more demanding customers, new competition and a wave of various changes and technological advances. These factors exert a pressure on retailers who are thus forced to find new and innovative ways to differentiate themselves. Therefore, retailers must focus their strategies on what consumers want to experience during their whole customer journey.
“The shopping experience has become the most important differentiating factor for retail companies and creating a unique shopping experience is crucial”
– Norbert Rickert, Sales Director Central Europe for Motorola Solutions
Since the store atmosphere is composed by elements which can be influenced to generate answers and reactions on consumers, it’s clear that the environment that surrounds customers is never neutral. Indeed, the retail space is always designed and organized to influence individuals. A store is full of cues, signals and messages that are communicated to customers. The retail store designers and visual merchandisers have thus as mission to create these ‘invisible signals’, a perfect store ambience, think about specific product organization and build a whole store atmosphere that will shape and positively affect the customer behavior.
About the luxury industry
In order to survive in today’s economic world, and especially in the highly competitive industry that is the luxury one, companies must distinguish themselves from one another through other means than just innovative products, high quality and attractive prices. Brands must develop customer centric retail strategies instead of having a product-centric approach. Creating outstanding customer experiences and emotional connections with customers is thus essential for luxury brands. As explained by Jean-Marc Pontroué, CEO of the luxury watch brand Panerai, people do not buy a luxury watch for practical purposes. Indeed, consumers do not simply purchase a watch, they buy a lifestyle, something money can’t buy. They seek for tailormade experiences that aren’t present in catalogues.
“We wanted to offer our customers something that goes beyond just buying a watch and allow them to experience the Panerai DNA”
– Jean-Marc Pontroué, CEO of Panerai
LEVITA – Creating emotions with a magic display
It’s widely recognized that visual merchandising is a major way of communicating with the customers. It has become a very essential tool in today’s era where marketers are looking for new and innovative ways to grab the customers’ attention. According to Arnould & Dion, magical thought and action is fundamental in marketing practice. Many researchers even have investigated the relevance of magic to the modern-day consumption. People want to reside in magic places, eat magic food, own magic pets and live magic moments. So why not bringing magic to the stores?
At LEVITA, we wanted to bring magic directly in the stores and add an extra value to the shopping experience. With our flagship product, the Gravity Window, our goal is to offer a little bit of magic in luxury stores and make people live a unique and memorable experience.
The visual merchandising, also called ‘the silent-salesman’, is one of the numerous factors influencing the consumer experience. Therefore, we have created a display which directly catches the customer’s attention and leave him speechless. Since most of the environmental signals (about 90%) are perceived trough the sight, our display has been designed to play the role of an eye-catcher, which automatically captures the consumer’s regard. The product exposed in the Gravity Window is visible from all its angles, without any support and in complete levitation. This brings the concept of levitation in a store display and delivers an extraordinary visual experience in order to highlight prestigious objects. The gravity window is thus a new way to enhance the customer experience and represents a disruptive way to expose products, something that was never seen before.
