In which areas of consumer sales is offline retail experience absolutely necessary?
Retail experience revolves on four pillars:
· The sensorial dimension
· The emotional dimension
· The psychosocial dimension
· The meaning dimension
The sensorial dimension of experience:
The sensorial dimension of experience refers to all sensorial stimuli linked to products and brands: the shape, color or touch of a product; the smell associated to a brand or a store; the artsy environment of a boutique; the decor of a performance or shopping space … Consumers’ senses are mobilized to trigger specific behaviors and to generate emotions.
The emotional dimension of experience:
The emotional dimension of experience uses emotions to generate brand and product liking and, potentially, trigger favorable behaviors. For example, humor, surprise or a sentiment of well-being can push consumers to buy products or to engage into a specific shopping behavior, for example.
The psychosocial dimension of experience:
When consumers visit a shopping mall, have fun in a theme park, hang out in a hotel, the experience both serves their individual and social identity. Chilling in a five-star hotel builds a status, an elite identity. At the same time, sharing pictures of it with friends, having drinks or sharing activities with other guests builds a social identity. All consumption experiences provide consumers with symbolic dimensions serving identity projects and social existence.
The meaning dimension of experience:
Since recently, consumers have expressed the need to find meaning in consumption practices. What does it mean to drink coffee bought in supermarket shelves when farmers starve at the other end of the world? Brands are expected to have more positive impact on the world, to rethink their purpose and to resonate with consumers’ values. Today, universalist values are on the rise: consumers seek well-being for themselves but also for the people around the world and the planet. Experiences can only be compelling when they meet this demand.
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Presently, retailers mostly focus on senses, emotions and psychosocial interactions in the retail space. Therefore, the areas of consumer sales where offline retail experience is essential are categories that do depend on senses, emotions and psychosocial interactions to sell.
Data shows that fashion or even fragrance can sell online and without any available physical space, provided the consumer “has the right to be wrong”. In other words, consumers will buy online, if they can easily try and send back, if they are not satisfied, in a hassle-free experience. For fragrance, brands like Sillages Paris send a customized fragrance with a sample of it so that buyers can try the fragrance using the sample and send the bottle back if they do not like it.
Offline retail experience is unavoidable if the brand cannot offer a hassle-free “right to be wring experience”. And when areas of consumer sales do well without any offline space, a reason to go brick-and-mortar is business development. Going offline expands the consumer base and allows more traffic via web-to-store-to-web.
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