Experiential Retailing Leveraged by Data Analytics

The purpose of the study is to establish how in retail industry consumer data can be leveraged and analysed to provide customers an enhance shopping experience. Popular machine learning algorithms related to text mining aids in parsing the natural language and helps to understand the brand image and what the brand currently is lacking. In the last decade, although ecommerce brought a revolution in retail industry, shopping trends show that consumers spend more in offline store than online. The rise of omni-channel retailing and data-driven decision-making are shifting retailer focus to providing enhanced in-store customer experiences. Retailers are trying to find ways to stand out in the highly competitive environment. The solution to this problem is providing retailtainment. This study helps to understand how the available customer data is to be analysed to create unique experiences and enable experience-based stores. The results of this study will help a retail company understand how omnichannel play an important role creating customer engagement strategies.

The 'store of the future' in popular culture: Trends in press coverage of experiential retailing

Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the global retail market has witnessed massive demographic and technological changes that have re-defined consumer experience. Such changes include the rise of the millennial consumer cohort, and the introduction of retailers implementing enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) data methodology to analyse business, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to enhance experience and co-customization interfaces. Two seminal pieces of literature regarding consumer experience are Ballantine and Parson's analysis of consumer experience factors and Pine and Gilmore's (1999) Experience Economy. However, these studies were conducted nearly a decade ago, leaving a void in the literature that does not consider more current factors impacting consumer experience. The purpose of the present research was to: analyse popular press coverage to understand trends in experiential elements; and to extend the Ballantine and Parsons' framework by proposing more current experiential elements. The researchers used the EBSCO database to generate a list of articles written from 2008 to 2018; these articles were then analysed via a qualitative content analysis method, using Ballantine and Parson's and Pine and Gilmore's frameworks as a base. Emergent themes that did not fit the above frameworks were added, thereby updating and extending the current body of knowledge. Findings indicated an increased emphasis on 'experiential retailing' over the years 2016‐18. Product display, employees, colour and comfort features emerged as the most important Ballantine and Parsons themes, while new emergent themes of technology, uniqueness/personalization and entertainment/escapism/discovery were added to the Ballantine and Parsons framework, thus updating it to reflect current retailing trends. Implications for industry and academia, along with directions for future research are provided.

Commercial, social and experiential convergence: fashion’s third places

Purpose This paper aims to examine the third-place phenomenon, within a fashion context, through the theoretical lens of servicescape and experiential retailing. It identifies third places’ typologies, evolution and adoption and explores the opportunities third places offer to retailers when attempting to connect better with consumers. Design/methodology/approach Taking a qualitative approach, research was conducted using secondary data sources, observation of 98 retail stores and the shopping-with-consumers technique with 42 informants. Manual thematic analysis and magnitude coding was conducted. Findings Third-place fashion practices are prevalent and growing. Their predominant functions include sociability, experiential, restorative and commercial. Variances inherent in third places are expounded and a third-place-dimensions model is proposed. Research limitations/implications Due to the chosen research approach, the results are limited in terms of generalizability to other settings. Several research directions are elucidated, including exploration of fashion third places on consumers’ place attachment within specific sectors; the impact of differing age, gender and geographies on third place meaning; virtual and hybrid forms; retailer motivations; and third-place alliances. Practical implications The preliminary study serves to support managers to understand how consumers perceive and experience the fashion third place and the potential of the third place to enhance consumer engagement. Originality/value The research makes a valuable contribution to the dearth of extant literature on third place within the fashion field. It offers a new theoretical perspective on form, function and benefits of third places as a conduit of social-, experiential-, and commercial-experience consumption.

Competitive Strategies in Retailing in Emerging Economies

Fierce competition in the retailing sector requires companies to differentiate themselves from competitors. To gain competitive advantage, retailers have started to implement new marketing strategies. The objective of this chapter is to present new competitive strategies in retailing. With this aim, the concepts and strategies of experiential retailing, green retailing, fair trade, customer loyalty program, pop-up store, self-service technologies, expiration date-based pricing, Quick Response Code (QR code) has been discussed along with national and international examples of each kind of strategy. In addition, advantages of each strategy are also covered. At the end of this chapter, some managerial implications and suggestions were discussed based on these new retailing strategies.

Convergence of Physical and Virtual Retail Spaces

This chapter examines the effective integration of online within the offline physical store in one holistic shopping experience in the fashion sector. It explores the merging of three key dimensions in creating an integrated experience – physical store atmospheric variables, technology implementation and consumer attitudes and motivations. An extensive literature review was conducted from which a conceptual framework ensued. A multi-method qualitative research utilising case study strategy was adopted (Bryman & Bell, 2007). The data was collected by observation of technology enabled fashion stores, experiential consumer interviews (Silberer, 2009) to examine motivations, behaviour and interaction with in-store technologies and interviews with experts providing insights on the role of the store, experiential retailing and the implementation of technologies in store design.