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Consumer trends, marketing, retail, brand, 2012

 

 

 

 

RHYTHMICS IN STORE French page

 


 

 

The city is an amusement park. The consumer’s expectation of entertainment imposes on retailers the need for constant and visible change or be forced to close down.

This marketing trend lies at the convergence of four of the 10 trends not to be missed – The globalisation of urban culture, Womanity. ..What women want, Spellbinding shopping, The important thing? Being recognised at a given moment.

Ten years ago you had to protect yourself against the city, its pollution (Estée Lauder’s Total Defense skin care), stress and hectic lifestyle (the explosion of day spas, a desire for cocooning).

Today, the city is the model of modernity, the place where “anything’s possible” – thanks to services and the Smartphone – and the place for events small and big (the imminent London Olympics). “Something’s always happening”: pop-up stores, street marketing, etc.).

The retailer as theatre is there for a reason.

Flagship stores of luxury, sport and hi tech brands, amazing restaurants, multi-experience concept stores, hyper-trendy interior design.

Result: the gulf between ‘traditional’ retailing and retailing as entertainment more in step with the transformation, bustle and rhythmic of the city – a visit to Paris starts with the Eiffel Tower and continues with the Vuitton store.

Entire retail chains are disappearing, like Borders bookshops, the second biggest bookseller in the United States, while Woolworths went two years ago.

Jobs are threatened – in France almost one pharmacy in four will disappear. The accelerating pace of change is not without consequences for business models that will have to be restructured if they are not to disappear too (Carrefour, Marks & Spencer, etc.).





The notion of rhythmic in the life of a store is becoming an essential criterion of modernity – an ever shorter time towards the ideal of immediacy.

Analogous to the “living thing”, to the rhythm of the body, to the beat of the heart.

Here are a few particularly symbolic focal points for the rhythmics of the new retailing.

SEE, TOUCH, MAKE THINGS HAPPEN, IN REAL TIME.
 

The interactive shop window is replacing the advertising poster or display of the latest product. Touch it and the casual visitor is instantly and virtually inside the store. The next step is easy: enter. Inside, the window display is relayed by interactive guides.

Fraunhofer ‘Interactive Shop Window’.
Repetto’s giant shop window, or Starbucks  window in Canada.
J. C. Penney’s interactive guide at the entrance to the store.




 

”FRESH DAILY”


The ultra-short price promotion has always been a feature of the hard sell.  What is increasing is the ultra-short product offer to be grabbed now or never - one of the Zara fashion chain’s magic recipes is to have new styles almost daily – a transcription of the “fresh daily delivery” of fresh food products.

Ultra-short promotion, today’s offer, and now, today’s store.
The ephemeral - pop-up stores, street marketing operations, festivals and events – is the element of surprise, of falling in love with something that makes people buy.

Restaurants have understood this very well. After the traditional dishes of the day and today’s set meals, we now have today’s price and today’s decor.
The restaurant What Happens When changes its decor every 30 days.
At the NeXT restaurant à Chicago, prices change with the day of the week.




MULTIPLICATION, THE MULTIPLE.

Seems to be one of the keys to the future of retailing.

The multi-experience offered by the concept store, the multi-scenography in fashion and luxury stores can be adapted in miniaturised form for small spaces.

At Selfridges in London and Printemps in Paris, the Clarins brand of beauty products are all together in an area of 70 m²: soundproof booths with shower, a waiting room called Glass Cube, 15 m² of demonstration space, consultation points, advisors, SkinTime express beauty treatments, instructive display space with all products.

In addition, modular fittings are moved around every two months.

Shopping Box pushes the model to the extreme. Compartments let as concessions to local craftsmen and manufacturers which constantly change products with their sales volumes.  A multiple offer every day with its share of new products.

Repetto’s and Havaiana’s customisation stands offering hundreds of combinations of shoe decorations play the same role.




THE ANIMATICS OF THE SHELF SPACE.

Point-of-sale displays (again) and interactivity.

Jam-packed shelves are no longer appropriate. To choose is to scan, touch, feel, move, personalise. For choosing a colour in a hairdressing salon, L'Oréal has replaced the fan of locks of hair with the Color Bar: selection becomes a game, a scanning process.

With Nespresso, Johnnie Walker in Shangai and Chanel in Moscow, the shelves become the theatrical stage set of the store.



THE ANIMATICS OF THE PRODUCT.

 

The product calls out to our personal experiences :

for music fans Heineken is a must, for budding gardeners it’s Dizao Organics skin care, and for nostalgics it will be Shanghai Vive or “traditionally produced” milk.






THE ANIMATICS OF THE ADVICE.

Sephora’s sales assistants have the MySephora application on their IPod with all the details of their customers: purchasing history, brands bought, favourite products, etc. in order to suggest promotional offers suited to each individual’s profile.

In the near future, face recognition with Pitt Patt will provide yet more new opportunities for immediate responsiveness.

Mirrors using augmented reality are increasingly numerous, providing the best in vivo demonstration there can be. The meteoric spread of Smartphones permits instant connection of the product on the shelf to the buying advice.






ON-THE-GO  AND SCHEDULED SERVICES.

 

Why does the Duane Reade pharmacy offer a mobile phone charging kiosk and another for shoe-cleaning?

Why do a café and a supermarket  offer vitamin injections and antioxidant injections at the former and Botox injections at the latter?

Services unrelated to the stores core business but directly related to the time available to the customer.
If the customer’s need for services leads them elsewhere, the customer will not be there to buy.

Scheduled services operate on a different time scale: the repetition of the action each month or each season. The customer remains a customer between two purchases in the store.
Very common in women’s beauty care, and men’s too, also seen in dress hire and fashion accessories.

Subscriptions to Birchbox, Bluum, GuyHaus.
Samples for sale, as a form of tryvertising.





CONCLUSION.
 

When we identified the ‘Multi’ trend, it was mainly about the product.

Multi now extends to the store, to modulate the patterns, routes, to increase the number of surprises, drive sales, to put advice on stage, to offer essential on-the-go services.

Technology, connectivity and design may be the salvation of small shops.

 

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