Over the past decade, shop retail design has become more and more predominant in many retailing businesses. Owners have come to realize the utmost importance of having professionals in shop design not only to exhibit the overall brand image of a shop in attracting customer traffic, or focusing on the practicality or functionality, but most important of all, to communicate these values in the perspective of their potential customers, i.e. what their shops stand for and how do these shops fit with the customers’ personality, value, and buying behaviour.
Branding is a holistic approach in building a brand’s identity, benefits and how it relates and associates to the customers’ wants, and having these messages communicated effectively and consistently to our customers. Shop retail design is one of the few very key tools in conveying these messages. Instead of how an owner wants to build up an image he or she desires, today the approach is more interactive, with owners willing to outsource professional retail designers to help materialize these wishes. This trend allows brand owners to have third party expertise rather than judging the wants and needs of a customer from their own angle.
Retailing business is all about ‘understanding our customers’ and not‘how we think the customers are.’ It is crucial to have the mindset of learning the customers wants and how the companies/brands can fill these gaps and win loyalty from the customers. Having a third party and professional retail shop designer enable owners to achieve:
1) A shop image which demonstrates the brand identity and differentiate it from the competition,
2) Functional usage and need according to the business nature such as numbers of display area, inventory storage and so forth,
3) A shopping environment, which contributes to the ‘Total Shopping Experience.’
Today, we are talking about ‘Consumer Experience Management’, and how can it be done without a thorough thinking on shop design here? We can easily see that major retailers understand how crucial it is to provide a pleasant shopping experience to our consumers and we have to compromise the space of having more merchandise with better ambience as well as a more interesting shopping experience, such as special waiting areas with cosy, and attention-to-detail in furniture and world class décor. The ‘less is more’ concept has set in even in many long established local retailers and the cooperation between a shop owner and interior designer is not only a business transaction but seeing each other as ‘strategic partners’ is now the emerging trend.
Designers are now even more aggressive in voicing their opinions on how a brand should communicate their brand equity to consumers and very often they are also the ones who spot the future trends of these consumers and recommend the owners to further innovate as pioneers in the industries, they are able to do so since they can be more easily see things in consumers’ perspective, and therefore interior designers for retail shops play an vital role in balancing the subjectivity and to provide more interactive inputs to retail owners. All retailers should work hand in hand with interior designers who share the same values in achieving the optimal business result.
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