Next-Gen trends have steadily revealed over several years that the golden age of traditional marketing has long passed. Gone are the days when a flyer or ad banner could engage an audience. Instead, Gen Z is constantly bombarded by advertisements and has grown sceptical of the average sales pitch, looking instead for brands that can offer something more.
In the wake of the Pandemic, which has left many people understimulated and bored with their screens, immersive retail experiences are a breath of fresh air. Interactive retail has gained in popularity for some time. We are talking about experiences that feel personal and exciting, invite customers to socialize and share, and make the shopping experience so much more memorable.
If your qualitative research shows that customers are looking for more engagement with your brand, creating a more interactive retail experience might be the next step. Here, we’ve listed some of our favourite examples of interactive retail to get inspired by.
Inspiration Corridors
Klépierre malls in France have partnered with creative agency DigitasLBi Paris to create interactive booths in shopping centres. These make customized fashion suggestions and can help locate items for curious shoppers. The booth scans for body and facial recognition. It can even recognize what you’re wearing to make suggestions for completing the outfit.
Additionally, the software behind the booth uses purchase history to take online product recommendations into the physical store and suggest where shoppers might find their favourite brands and items. Equipped with tall touch screens, the booth is an experience to enter and is interactive from all sides.
Jou Jou Toys
Design firm StruckAxiom created an interactive video wall for toy store Jou Jou, masking each screen like a painting on an old-fashioned, wall-papered wall. The display is a kid’s dream, showing various creatures and monsters in interactive portraits. The creatures run through the frame, hide behind walls, pop up again, and delight children of any age.
We don’t doubt that parents will be dragged back into this store time and time again because their young ones will be drawn back toward those moving portraits.
Repetto’s Ballerina
We return to France, where passers-by can orchestrate their own ballet performance by standing on a specific spot in front of Repetto’s window display. There, by swiping their arms left or right, they can change the image on the massive TV screen placed in the window display showing a ballerina in a different part of her dance routine. It’s a beautiful use of interactive technology that gives the store an elegance and artistry that many can only envy.
Virtual Mannequins
Another highly modern and high-tech example that feeds right into the Next Gen trends is the virtual hanger-signalled Mannequins designed by teamLabHanger. The system requires a complete in-store installation.
We all know the posters of models displaying some examples of fashion in clothing stores.
These are exchanged for screen displays that show off virtual models wearing precisely the item you picked off the rack and showing it off from different angles and in different outfits.
Musical Retail
Audio is back on the rise, with podcasts and retail audio gaining more popularity. It’s a vital part of an immersive store experience as it engages another sense other than just sight and touch. For example, clothing brand Calvin Klein established a Holiday sound installation in stores across the globe.
This featured music by an experimental performance artist, which could be heard in the store’s holiday window. There were also listening stations in-store.
Customers that tag the song could receive a free download of it and store promotions.
Ready to Create Interactive Retail Experiences?
Interactive retail is a whole new category of marketing that is yet relatively unexplored. Every brand that engages with this strategy is innovating in creative ways. This means you're only limited by your creativity and understanding of your audience and what resources you have available to you.
When designing an interactive retail experience, qualitative research is crucial. You cannot rely simply on numeric data to hope to understand what customers think. Instead, it is vital to draw on their opinions and experiences through long-form interviews and questionnaires. This will help you understand whether the immersive experience you have created actually made an impact and elicits the intended emotional reaction.
Qualitative research can also help before setting up an interactive retail installation. For example, your audience can tell you which aspects of their products are most exciting. You can then combine this experience with other senses to create a more immersive store.
Work with an Insights platform to better understand your target audience and what an immersive experience might look like to them. For example, this is Selfhood focuses on Next-Gen trends. It works closely with a network of U-30s to understand their experience and what they're hoping to see from their favourite brands.
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