Brick-and-Mortar Retail: The New Playbook for In-Store Experiences

The past year was rough for physical retail. It was devastating. Adding the effects of the Covid-19 triggered shutdowns and restrictions into the continuous, decades-long erosion of middle-class income led to 30 main retailers filing for bankruptcy. While digital sales spiked at 33.6percent and e-commerce grew worldwide at a rate of 27.6percent in 2020, the retail landscape endured an undeniable and enduring change.

Based on Doug Stephens, retail business writer and analyst, "[T]he entire society is being pulled from the industrial age and throughout the threshold of the electronic age." Although much of the new, digitally aligned customer behaviour isn't expected to disappear, there is a path to the future for physical retail.

Think Differently to be Different!

It's simply not possible for brick-and-mortar to match e-commerce's lack of overhead, value pricing, and capacity to offer a wide assortment of product. To be able to survive, physical retail wants to distinguish from e-commerce. Differentiation can be achieved by focusing both the merchant's mission and client journey on the in-store encounter. Selling unique and engaging in-store encounters, rather than merchandise, will build lasting customer relationships and will ensure the durability and strength of physical retail outlets.

The Struggle for Physical Retail Began Long Before Covid-19

Along with Covid-19, the constant economic undermining of the American middle class had a much larger and more devastating impact. Wage stagnation and increasing costs of living have eliminated disposable income that was formerly spent at middle-class retailers. The median American household now earns $5,500 less income than in the year 2000, and the American middle class has lost 19 percent of the total aggregate income in America since 1970.

Conversely, the top class gained that exact same 19% and now owns a whopping 48 percent of the whole income in the usa. Once purchases are made by this part of the populace, the balance is transferred into savings and investments. This type of concentration of wealth (bigger purchases made by fewer individuals in a restricted collection of retailers) reduces the total volume of retail trade, while ensuring that luxury retailers remain afloat.

Is it any wonder that the dollar store section is booming? In 2019 there were more Dollar Generals and Family Dollar sockets than Starbucks, with a complete number of 38,000 doors anticipated to be available by 2021.

What Is So Special About Brick-and-Mortar?

Brick-and-mortar does offer unparalleled opportunities for retailers to connect with clients on a person, sensory level and build lasting relationships. What can a physical merchant do to ensure they do not fall by the side of the road with the likes of Pier 1 and Modell's Sporting Goods? Here are some initial steps to assist jumpstart and redirect your thinking about your physical retail location.

1. Define Your Company Brand. Align It with Your Client's Brand

"Brand" is described as a system of values, beliefs, goals or purposes. Actively define your company brand. Owning and controlling your brand means you control your story and how your brand is perceived. Brand definition should be an act of curation, not the creation of fiction. Avoid focusing on features, advantages or price. Your brand should revolve around character to forge a deeper connection with your audience.

Examine your intended audience and core client's brand. Do they align with your own brand? They should. Customers will develop an enduring love for brand that markets in a way that means that they know client issues, motives and desires. Be genuine and purposeful. An authentic brand purpose captures hearts most often.

2. Define Your Organization Mission

A assignment statement is described as an"action-oriented vision statement, announcing the purpose an organization functions to its viewers. It often contains a general description of the organization, its purpose, and its own objectives."

"The mission has evolved from a sense of transaction to a sense of connection. We will need to surprise, entertain and advise our customers, to be able to provide them unique experiences that a site can not provide," says Nicolas Houzé, chief executive of Galeries Lafayette.

Nicolas Houzé was far ahead of the curve when he left the above pronouncement in 2019. In our current retail environment, in-store customer experiences ought to be the core reason for existence and should feature prominently in your mission statement. Your assignment should illustrate how your company brand aligns with your client's brand, and that, as an organization, you're fulfilling your mission of providing a unique and unparalleled physical retail encounter each day that your retail outlet is open.

3. Identify and Map Your Customer Experience. Make It Great!

Walk and examine the whole experience your client has, from even before they enter your front door. Identify and map the encounter. Consider your map like it's a diagram of a story arc or narrative. A story arc typically involves a climax, where a major character makes a significant decision, or an action starts during which a solution is provided. You're in-store correlate is going to be a stage in the customer travel where emotions and sensory experience run highest.

Seize on existing opportunities in your client journey to improve, celebrate and expand that experience. Bring more experience into regions of your store which are darker and less traveled. Utilize expertise as a portal site for discovery and use sensory experience as a way of forging a relationship with your customer. Relationships based in sensory experience will resonate far beyond the physical boundaries of your shop, as sensory information related to significant experiences produces long-term memories. Creating memories is also a surefire way to cement a retail outlet as a retail destination.

Think primarily about your client and how they will feel in shop, and concentrate less on how you market product in store. This change in conceptualization and strategy can allow you to formulate your distinctive brand experience. Let us take a look at a few of the ways retailers are producing and utilizing unique brand experiences.

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Experiential Case Study: Virgin Holidays Stores

Virgin Atlantic recently opened Virgin Vacations, a series of concept retail shops made to capitalize on the identifying opportunities provided by physical retail. The move is an intriguing industry about-face, as originally, the online travel industry quickly eclipsed traditional storefront booking agents.

In this new shop concept, face-to-face interaction enables Virgin Vacations to build better relationships with clients and brings a human factor to the online brand and support. Virgin Holiday stores utilize sensory experience, physical expertise and virtual reality to enhance customer delight and anticipation about reserving an upcoming holiday, and finally create a feeling of desire for traveling.

The Virgin Holiday Stores are intended to look like the Virgin Airport lounges and give the identical spa services and champagne bar. A children's entertainment area means adults can have an uninterrupted reservation experience. Sample plane section chairs is given for trial so that clients can confidently select and book their seat location. And in the end, the Virgin Holiday VR roller-coaster, where clients seatbelt themselves for a VR-goggled whirl through international travel destinations, must be the penultimate of sensory, in-store encounter. All this is precisely what a run-of-the-mill, online, electronic booking procedure just can not offer.

Experiential Case Study: Dick's House of Sport Stores

Dick's Sporting Goods' mission--"to be the No. 1 sports and fitness specialty retailer for all athletes and outdoor enthusiasts through the relentless improvement of everything we do"-- doesn't emphasize encounter, but their new store concept now being analyzed certainly does.

Dick's is unveiling two new concept stores, unimaginably named"Dick's House of Sport." The 100,000 square feet of shop will contain areas for rock climbing, winter skating, a running track and outdoor turf area, a batting cage and putting green, virtual golf driving and much more. The retailer will make use of these shops as real-time R&D centers to test concepts which can be applied to their over 700 stores nationwide.

At first blush, the Dick's Sporting Goods method of incorporating in-store encounter in their business model might seem more geared to the strategic and practical than the psychological, but it surely makes sense for their product lineup. Even more breathtaking when done in the top of a mountain valley, who can assert that clinging to the peak of a climbing wall with palms and feet before the thrill of kicking out to rappel down is not an emotional moment? Dick's integration of such a vast assortment of physical experiences is guaranteed to provide an ever-new customer base searching for the gear required for their next private, in-store adventures.

Experiential Case Study: IKEA's Swede Dreams Events

Following an initial, highly successful PR stunt in 2011, and because of increased demand on social networking, IKEA recently brought back its Swede Dreams occasion. One hundred lucky winners and die-hard IKEA lovers were randomly picked to spend a night sleeping at the fascinating maze which is the IKEA showroom. IKEA capitalized on the event by using it as an opportunity to immerse their guests at a complete brand experience. Guests were permitted to customize their experience by choosing beds, pillows, and bedding in the IKEA catalog and craft their own sleeping environment themselves, which encouraged additional purchases before and after the event.

Imagine the impression that particular night should have made on the sleepover participants, especially the kids in the group! Such an exceptional brand experience would surely create exceptional lasting memories and cement lifelong customer/brand fans, sure to return to shops and purchase on line time after time.

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Make Some Physical Retail Magic!

Brick-and-mortar retail isn't dead, but it will have to change. And it will continue to change as brands once more find their footing with shoppers that are returning from a year or more of digital, one dimensional, online shopping. Brick-and-mortar has the ideal chance, right now, to observe the in-store experience for precisely what it is--something the online experience isn't --a physical, emotionally stirring and unforgettable experience. The difference between watching a roller-coaster ride online and actually being on the ride? Well...you get it.

There are myriad ways to make exceptional and emotionally driven client experiences in store. Those ways don't have to be complex or too expensive to execute. Some can be done only with display and signage, but that is only a starting point. What's needed is a new eye. A creative, new approach. A renewed, deeper understanding of your client and what makes them tick. All combined, these things work in harmony to make a perfect formula for shoppers to not just return in shop however, to return again and again (and bring their friends--because who actually enjoys that roller-coaster ride alone?) .

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