Introduction
Twin transition is heavily influencing brands’ strategies, offerings
and communication at every level. In Fashion Product System digital and
sustainability transformations are leading to experimentation from
product to retail and communication design.
In this context, the evolution of consumer practices and the
relationship brand-consumer are radically transforming retail experience
design. Contemporary consumer practices in fashion and lifestyle are
transforming into experiences of civic engagement, of co-creation, of
peer-exchange and much more; also sustainable consumption practices like
second-hand purchases, product repairing, recycling, rental practices
etc. are completely reshaping retail experience concepts. The
above-mentioned changes are facilitated by technological integration
possibilities at all levels of the relationship brand-consumers.
The role of design in this context is not just linked to the spatial
design, but also to integration of technological potential with
functionality and imagination; designers in the retail experience need
to produce sociocultural contents and practices able to generate value
for brands, customers and territories. This research is investigating
how design approaches and tools can manage the complex entanglement of
stakeholders’ needs and technological integration in customer
experience, with a focus on: the future-scenarios possibilities for the
retail spaces (taking into consideration their urban context); tools for
transdisciplinary work aimed at retail experience design.
Methodology
To investigate the contemporary retail design process, the research
has been conducted through two main questions and related sub-questions:
1) How is retail evolving consequently to the changes in consumption
practices, boosted by technological and sustainable transformation
processes? 1.1) What are the new meanings and functions of retail
stores? How do they relate to digital and virtual retail possibilities?
What impact will the digitization of retail have on urban environments?
2) What design approaches and tools can foster transdisciplinary and
collaborative work in the design process of fashion retail experience
design?
The aim of answering to the first research question is the understanding
of the requirements and scenarios in the contemporary fashion retail
field, to put the basis for answering the second question, which is
investigating the retail design process and its adaptation to the new
scenarios and requirements, with the intention to create a framework and
specific tools to be included in the retail design process. In this
work, the research related to the first question, has been conducted as
secondary research on the fields of marketing and management studies,
information technology, design studies, consumption practices studies,
media and communication studies, and urban studies with relation to
fashion retail experience and consumption practices innovations, with
the aim of understanding ongoing transformation in the field of fashion
consumer practices and experiences. The choice of including different
fields of studies in the literature review answers to the need to
understand the complex entanglements and interrelations between the
different disciplines involved in the retail experience design process.
The findings are hereby organized as follows: first, an exploration of
the evolution of experience definition is presented, secondly, major
transformations in retail customer experience are described, organised
by the following overarching topics: retail experience designed to
empower brand engagement; retail experience influenced by communities
and collaborative media; retail experience as a conjunction between
brands and urban environment; retail experience aimed at communication
and services offering.
Currently, the investigation of the second research question is still in
its preliminary stage. The initial findings, which are based on the
crossing of the results of secondary research on the retail design
process and higher education teaching and training activities, have been
presented in the fourth paragraph. This section explores the need for
the development of a transdisciplinary framework for professionals
engaged in fashion retail experience design, taken into consideration
the ongoing transformation in retail and consumer practices, as well as
technological transformation. It also reflects on the new requirements
for designers working in this field. Moreover, a retail experience
design tools map is provided, highlighting the disciplines from which
each tool originates and showcasing their overlapping utilization
throughout the various phases of the design process. It is important to
note that these findings are part of an ongoing research endeavor and
have been obtained through secondary research as well as higher design
education activities.
Fashion Retail Experience
Experience, sustainability, and digitalisation are key themes that
sought to challenge existing business models and posit new ways of
producing, consuming, and experiencing fashion.1
Already from the rising of experience economy, customers expected a more
exclusive and personal relationship with brands,2
which does not end with product purchasing and does not end outside the
retail space.
The definition of the term “experience” according to Pine and Gilmore is
the following: “an experience occurs when a company intentionally uses
services as the stage, and goods as props, to engage individual
customers in a way that creates a memorable event. Commodities are
fungible, goods tangible, services intangible, and experiences
memorable”.3
If services are intangible and experiences are memorable and personal,
the question arising could be what role fashion retail spaces are
assuming in this shift to experience economy, now that the
digitalisation and cultural change have created conditions which can
overcome the need of shopping in a physical place. The increasing focus
on customer experience arises because customers now interact with firms
through myriad touch points in multiple channels and media, resulting in
more complex customer journeys. The explosion in potential customer
touch points and the reduced control of the experience require firms to
integrate multiple business functions, including information technology
(IT), service operations, logistics, marketing, human resources, and
even external partners, in creating and delivering positive customer
experiences.4
Hoyer et al.,5 building on the analysis of the
customer experience as a multidimensional construct,6
develop a conceptual framework that connects the technologies with
customer experience, arguing that, as brand-related stimuli,
technologies can evoke different experience dimensions and thereby
create experiential value. Grewal et al.7
investigated the functions which are being delegated to in-store
technology, framing five key areas: technology and tools to facilitate
decision-making; visual display and merchandise offer decisions;
consumption and engagement; big data collection and usage; analytics and
profitability.
Alexander and Blazquez Cano8 define five typologies
of technology’s role, enabling physical store integration in omnichannel
experience: entertainment (amplify the sensory experience);
servitization (customer service); provide knowledge of brand or product
(storytelling); choice editing; and fulfillment. Kotler,9
listing the technologies used in customer experience and marketing 5.0,
adds that there is no exact prescription on when and how to use it and,
defining marketing 5.0, he writes that technology “is applied to help
marketers create, communicate, deliver, and increase value throughout
the customer journey. The goal is to create a new customer experience
(CX) that is fluid and compelling. In developing it, companies must
achieve a balanced symbiosis between human and computer
intelligence”.
Advancements in smart technologies have profoundly disrupted the fashion
value chain — design, sourcing, manufacturing, sales, services, and
communications. This ranges from enabling dynamic, customer-centred
supply chains with accelerated information and product pipelines —
boosting novel online, offline, and converged spaces to consume and
engage with brands (e.g., the Metaverse) — to improving marketing
intelligence, by easing the collection, analysis, and use of data to
make more rapid and informed decisions.10
Major Transformations in Fashion Retail Customer Experience
Retail Experience Designed to Empower Brand Engagement
Accordingly with Arvidsson11 perspective, brands
are processual objects shaped by the intricate connections between
people, products, information, and images. They engage individuals
through symbolic, virtual, and embodied performances, encompassing both
material and immaterial elements.12 The processes of brand
performance and identity construction are intertwined with cultural
consumption practices and the formation of identities, lifestyles, and
cultures.13 Brands evolve through interactions
with individuals, products, information, images, and cultural practices,
emphasizing their dynamic nature.
In the society of experience, customer engagement and brand uniqueness
run through experiential strategies and customers’ emotional
involvement. The brand identity is not only represented by products, but
it is being built through experiences that can be linked to a product,
or just recall the brand’s values and atmospheres, and open the brand to
a broader offering of products and services. Describing the evolution of
customer experience offering Addis categorizes experience as follows:
the basic experience (focused on enhancing products);14
the enhanced experience (opening to product-related services, apps,
information); the transformative experience (offering a diversified
range of brand-related products and experiences, implying a change
toward more complex business models). In this regard Addis also adds
that the most effective experience in fostering brand engagement is the
transformative experience. “Brands adopting the transformative
experience offer multifaceted experiences based on several product
categories”, which objective is to arouse emotion to feed the brand’s
relationship with customers. Traditional concepts of sector and industry
do not apply to the transformative experience, that broadens brand’s
perception for the construction of a whole world imagery linked to the
brand.
First examples of transformative experience belong to entertainment
industry, in the fashion industry one of the many examples could be the
Gucci Garden: a boutique offering exclusive luxury products, a museum
and a gallery curated by art critic and fashion curator Maria Luisa
Frisa, with a bookshop and a restaurant, Gucci Osteria, run by
Michelin-starred chef Luca Bottura; located in the centre of Florence,
in a historical building, Palazzo della Mercanzia, the Gucci Garden
links the brand immediately to Italian Renaissance.
The museum and the gallery allow customers to dig into the brand’s
heritage. In the exhibition Archetypes, it is possible to physically
enter the brand’s campaigns, thanks to immersive installations.
Everything at Gucci Garden is perfectly concerted to be shared on social
media by visitors sharing their emotions and excitement, in accordance
with Addis15 concept of transformative
experience which is described as engaging, and therefore with the power
to become viral. However, the Gucci Garden does not stop at the Palazzo
della Mercanzia, but also manifests itself in the virtual world with
various representations, with the intent of expanding its brand to
younger audiences. It is possible to navigate through the exhibition
Archetypes thanks to a virtual tour on the exhibition website.
None of the described offerings is innovative or original per se,
nevertheless, it is the whole of their entanglement and adherence to
brand values and aesthetics that contribute to bringing to life the
Gucci transformative experience.
Retail Experience Influenced by Communities and Collaborative Media
Collaborative media is what allowed consumers to become also
producers, changing media paradigms and users’ expectations. “In
Collaborative Media, these new production logics are embedded in the
idea that not only do collaborative media enable the user to produce
media content, they also enable them to modify or even (re)design the
very infrastructure of the media: the programs, software components and
web services that can be used for media production”.16
This kind of modularity and modifiability has been already existing for
a long time in the gaming industries, which are nowadays inspiring the
new rules of experience. Gamification and its paradigms are already
being used as a valuable method for improving brands’ customer
engagement, motivation, loyalty, users’ onboarding experiences, and data
gathering. It seems that this tendency is being confirmed and
consolidated also in the future of fashion phygital customer
experience.
Intangible experiences, virtual and digital worlds and the related
communities are emerging and creating new business opportunities,
although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow
the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale — one that our
avatars could transcend across platforms,17
fashion is going through its first attempts of de-materialization,
thinking about completely virtual products to purchase in online gaming
platforms or virtual limited editions products certified thanks to NFT
technology (i. e.: Balenciaga; Gucci; Nike; Ralph Lauren and Prada
experiments on gaming platforms and Luis Vuitton and Burberry linking
NFTs to gaming). According to LSN Global Future Forecast 2023 report,
gamers are placing almost the same importance on looking good in virtual
worlds with their avatars as they do in real life, opening space for
experimentation for fashion brands in the virtual worlds. So
digital/virtual world opportunities cannot be left behind, since younger
generations and new emerging communities18
are demonstrating strong interest toward new ways of expressing
themselves through virtual and digital fashion. According to Bolter19 mainstream culture doesn’t exist
anymore, culture is fragmented and cannot be analyzed following former
categories of “elite” and “popular” culture, it is fragmented into a
diversity of cultural practices and communities operating beyond the
dichotomy of high and popular culture. As Bolter writes “The knowledge
that defines each community is canonical only within that community”.20
All these aspects deriving from digital media and cultures are shaping
society and consumers and can’t be ignored while envisioning the future
of customer experiences.
Retail Experience as a Conjunction Between Brands and Urban Environment
Urban environment is a complex and stratified, its constitution
changes over time, due to countless factors among which political,
economical and social conditions are just the easiest to individuate;
however retail and brands have with no doubts a role in shaping the
identity and the perception of the city. As Bookman states,21 three distinct modalities by which
brands interface with city life can be listed: retail brandscapes (brand
retail spaces in the urban context); urban branding (areas,
neighborhoods, and whole cities linked to brands in their identities);
mobile brand strategies (the way brands exploit mobile technologies and
marketing to engage individuals on the go).
Brands, not only thanks to retail, but also as media communication and
representation, are relevant in urban structures, they play a role in
urban organization and functions. Moreover they influence routines and
practices in the urban areas and mediate the public appearance.
In the context of mediated city, fashion has a special role, both
historically and contemporaneously, because of its ability to
communicate signs and symbols of social status and actions. The first
urban entities influencing the appearance and activities of the cities
have been shops and department stores. Benjamin in his Passagenwerk
(Arcades projects) talks about the fantasmagorie of goods, the pleasure
of getting lost in the lights and shop windows in the streets of 1930s’
Paris, also referring to Le Bon Marché (one of the first fashion and
luxury department stores in the world).
Highlighting how already in 19th century fashion has developed a
distinctive form related to the parallel emergence of consumerism and
spaces of consumption, spectacle, leisure, and pleasure.22
Fashion brands in the city become products and territories: they become
worlds in which one can also physically enter, as happens in consumer
centers, megastores, cities, theme parks, so that the very display of
the brand sign becomes almost superfluous.23
In the contemporaneity, physical experiential retail is transforming
into cultural, entertainment and sensory stimulation space firmly
anchored to the urban space of the new smart cities, or even a space
capable of promoting individual and social wellbeing.24
Also, Alexander & Blazquez Cano25 link the new physical
retail to localization and territory while describing the concept of
“slow retail” (in opposition to “fast-retail”), adding at the definition
also the following features: pursuit of pleasure, convivial experience,
diversity, quality and slowing-down. The shift to a more interactive
relationship between brands and consumers-producers, mentioned in the
above paragraphs, implies that brands and branded places such as urban
cultural quarters are as not simply the product of a top-down imposition
of a hegemonic vision by branding agencies and agents. Rather, they
surface through a complex, dynamic interplay involving multiple actors
and auspices in the performance and co-creation of a range of
experiences, meanings, and cultures associated to the brand.
New consumer-citizens’ strong expectations, call brands to proactively
contribute to improving the quality of life in cities, while at the same
time cultivating local presence and awareness. Branding activity has
become increasingly sophisticated in terms of its involvement with, and
usage of, urban space to create specific environments for brand
engagement.
An emerging practice consists of forming partnerships with cities to
launch and/or finance temporary or permanent urban development projects,
devoting a fraction of their marketing budgets to improve city dwellers’
quality of life, in 2019 JCDecaux defined this practice Brand Urbanism®
(a well-known example is the Pigalle Duperré Court, the basketball court
created by fashion brand Pigalle in collaboration with Nike, which
transformed an urban void into a new vital space for the city).
According to Bookman26 this is a dynamic process in which
brands frame and co-generate experiences of everyday life and forms of
urban sociality as part of the interface with consumers and the creation
of brand value.
Retail Experience Aimed at Communication and Services Offering
Digital companies such as Google and Amazon are opening showrooms and
physical experiential retail spaces gaining back in corporeity and
tactility, which are in fact physical bridges to digital worlds and
services. A form that creates new sales space through the creation of
experiences, moving towards increasingly integrated strategies that use
omnichannel sales and communication methods.27
The idea of the fashion retail space seen as one of the physical
interfaces of the brand with consumers brings in an important concept:
the servitization of fashion retail spaces, that is the transformation
of physical retail into a space dedicated to services offered from the
brand, from beauty and fashion counselling, to repairing services and
many others digitally driven innovations. For example, the Amazon Style
store, that merges the physical and digital experience, displays one
piece of each model, optimizing its space. The format does not prevent
customers from trying the products, the pieces are available thanks to a
complex inventory management system. Through the Amazon Shopping app,
customers scan a product’s QR code and see information such as sizes,
colors, overall customer ratings, and additional product details. Once
inside the changing room, the user can, through a large display, try on
a thousand variations of the same garment with the certainty that it
will be his size. Machine learning algorithms produce real-time
recommendations to give customers the most personalized experience. It
is also a form of upsell by digitally capturing a customer at the
physical location, as suggestions related to your preferences will
appear in the Amazon Shopping application. Finally, with the support of
technology, the team responsible for the service can help customers by
supplying the fitting rooms and back-of-house operations, as well as at
check-out, having as an option of payment method the Amazon One
feature.
It is worth mentioning that Amazon already used artificial intelligence
to improve its fashion services before. Style by Alexa, for example, a
feature in the Amazon Shopping app that suggests, compares, and rates
clothing using algorithms and human operators.
To summarize, in Amazon Style stores, online-chosen products are
delivered directly into the fitting room booked by the customer,
together with other items selected by the algorithm, based on customer
data gathering and amazon recommendation system, to deliver a tailored
shopping experience, strongly influenced, guided, and mediated by the
algorithm, just like the amazon online one, but in a physical store,
bringing the recommendation algorithm from digital to physical
dimension.
From Retail Experience Transformations to Meaning-driven Design Process Innovation
In the present research, findings on retail experience
transformations described in the previous paragraphs, are considered as
the starting point to map and define the variables to be included in the
retail customer experience design process.
As already stated in the previous paragraphs, technological and customer
experience transformation is changing the designers’ work, which is
gaining more and more level of complexity and needs to be addressed in a
transdisciplinary way. More precisely, the retail designer of the next
customer experience should be able to match technical potential with
imagination and function, generating or enhancing socio-cultural
contents and practices, and feed value production equally for brands,
customers, and territories, in a meaning-driven design process.
This implies the need to build a framework of shared knowledge and tools
able to foster the collaboration between all the stakeholders involved
in the design process; and to improve the decision-making processes by
considering variables and conditional factors.
In this phase, it is still to study further which design-driven
approaches will lead to the creation of the framework this research is
aimed at. A first attempt to systematize the tools used in the retail
experience design process is illustrated in the next paragraphs.
Design Role in the Ongoing Transformation of Fashion Retail Experience Design
Retail design is quickly changing, causing struggles for retail
designers on how to perceive and approach what is designed and how to
find out. However, the description of an interface between retailer and
customer28 reflecting the small system of
design, inclusive of web shop, social media, curated product assortment,
and visual merchandising offers an idea of the context to investigate.29
The retail designer of the next customer experience should be able to
match technical potential with imagination and function, generating or
enhancing socio-cultural contents and practices, and feed value
production. Quartier et al.30 set the new
requirements for the retail designer in the age of phygit, asserting
that now more than ever designers should assume a holistic approach and
that transdisciplinary work is necessary to manage the complexity of
customer experience. The authors further argue that the competencies to
be integrated in retail designers’ skills are: understanding how digital
technologies can be applied and how they work; ability to generate
creative ideas; ability to think across channels starting from the
customer journey and technology integration, considering variables and
conditional factors. Building on Quartier’s work, Servais analyzes
fashion retail key components that contribute to designing a valuable
in-store experience (namely: brand, customer, offer/service, physical
space, and “unexpected factor”), and problematizes the need for retail
designers to integrate the experience design in a “pre-concept” design
process stage.
Mapping Existing Tools Supporting Retail Experience Design
Architects’ and designers’ work is typically characterized by the use
of tools. Some meet the coordinative functions as objects of persuasive
communication while others help to develop a general understanding of an
idea or a task and others still may work as recall of design principles,
approaches, methods or open questions. Still, some others help to keep
control of the activities and materials while others represent the
design decisions to a predetermined level of detail and technical
precision.31 The new directions in retail
experience design raise questions about which tools need to be
integrated in retail experience design process. Firstly, the questions
address which tools designers use to generate creative ideas, to think
across channels and, to integrate technology. Further, it is to
understand how these tools have been modified or need to be updated to
be respondent to the new requirements. Furthermore is important to
understand how to foster transdisciplinary work; and facilitate the
dialogue and the exchange of ideas and concepts between the different,
heterogeneous actors during the customer experience design
process.
The research conducted on the tools supporting retail experience design
has resulted in the creation of a tools map (Fig. 1). This map
illustrates the correlation between project phases and the corresponding
tools used in the retail experience design process. Since retail
customer experience design is a transdisciplinary activity, the tools
utilized in this field also come from various disciplines. To provide
clarity, each tool is labeled with the discipline from which it
originates.
One interesting observation is the presence of overlapping labels
between disciplines for certain tools. This indicates that
transdisciplinary and collaborative work is essential in the retail
experience design process. It highlights the interconnectedness of
different disciplines and their contributions to creating effective
retail experiences.
While the tools map may not be exhaustive and still has room for
improvement, it serves as a valuable starting point for studying the
tools used in fashion retail experience design. It will serve as a
reference collection for designing new frameworks and tools, which
aligns with the goals of the present research. The map provides a
foundation for further exploration and refinement of tools to enhance
the design process and ultimately contribute to the advancement of
retail experience design in the fashion industry.
Conclusion and Future Work
The work presented has been built by researching in the fields of
marketing and management studies, information technology, design
studies, consumption practices studies, media and communication studies,
and urban studies with relation to fashion retail experience and
consumption practices innovations, with the aim of understanding ongoing
transformation in the field of fashion consumer practices and
experiences. The choice of including different fields of studies and
points of view answers to the need to understand the complex
entanglements and interrelations between the different disciplines
involved in the retail experience design process, in order to put the
bases for the construction of a transdisciplinary framework for experts
operating in fashion retail experience, able to manage complexity and
cutting-edge technological integration and to generate value for brands,
customers and territories.
The results presented in this article are based on secondary research
methods, with the main purpose of understanding the transformations in
the field of fashion consumer practices and experiences and constitute
the first step of the present research. The following steps, aimed at
framework definition and at tools designing, will include future work on
the visualisation of the tools map, here presented in Fig. 1, better
highliting project phases, actors involved in the design process and how
the tools used in the different project steps are able to foster the
transdisciplinary work.
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