Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

How advancing in-store technology is leading to a new era of experience design.

By Jim Crawford

Just five short years ago, store designers had it easy when it came to technology as a part of their design tool kit. The IT department would specify the size of the point-of-sale terminals, perhaps a big blocky kiosk unit replacing a well-designed endcap, or maybe marketing would add a clunky TV over an aisle to show paid ads from brands carried in the store. Simple concepts that didn’t challenge the basic premises of traffic flow, visual merchandising, layout and design.

But fast-forward to 2011, where shoppers armed with smartphones roam store aisles checking prices and searching Facebook for shopping advice from friends; where iPads have (literally) put the always-on power of e-commerce into the hands of shoppers in the stores; and where multiple HD televisions throughout the home have become the norm rather than the centerpiece of an expensive “media room.” The reality is that consumers – especially shoppers – have rapidly adopted new technologies in their daily lives.

Retail stores, on the other hand, have lingered back in the “stone age” of the 1990s. Consider that p-o-s systems and kiosks still dominate the technology footprint of stores, and shoppers looking for product information are more apt to Google it on their mobile phones than find a sales associate to ask. Despite a huge hype in the mid-2000s around the “store of the future,” most of the innovation has been on the back end.

Technology prices have come dramatically down over the years, shoppers are clamoring for new experiences and retail management teams strive to differentiate from the competition by any and all means. So why has it been so hard for next-generation shopping technology to get into the stores?

Over the years, retail has adopted a strategy of embracing “multichannel retail,” separating the shopping experience into channels and assigning organizational responsibility over each channel. This worked well for the past decade, as retailers accepted a certain loss of control over the shopping experience on the Web (where competitors and information about prices and products were only a click away) while retaining control of the shopping experience inside their stores.