Retail Reimagined

Phygital retail therapy and the future of the in-store experience.

Last week in Paris, a gigantic sculpture of Yayoi Kusama was installed across the exterior of Louis Vuitton’s flagship Champs Elysées store. Enlivened with colourful polka dots across its scaled terraces, the Art Déco building has been transformed as part of a wider collaboration between the contemporary artist and luxury label. Alongside this, the brand’s New York store on Fifth Avenue unveiled an uncanny animatronics robot of the artist painting its windows. Entitled ‘Creating Infinity: The worlds of Yayoi Kusama and Louis Vuitton’, the spectacle marks the collaboration’s launch and is yet another instance of retail strategies driven by experience.

Nearly three years after brick-and-mortar retail sites were forced to close their doors due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still witnessing companies massively rethinking their physical strategies. With rapid advancements in AR technologies and stark competition from digital commerce natives, the circumstances under which physical retailers must operate have been drastically and irrevocably altered. Kati Chitrakorn, retail and marketing editor at Vogue Business remarked that ‘customer expectations [have been] heightened since experiencing the ease and flexibility that comes with online shopping’ and suggested that they also need enticing back.

Using the spacial environments of retail stores akin to heavily curated art exhibitions plays heavily on the experiential aspect of shopping. An article first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1998 highlighted that ‘consumers unquestionably desire experiences’. Incidentally, retailers must understand that 'experiences' are not exclusively about entertainment or exhibitions but, as the article stated, ‘companies stag[ing] an experience whenever they engage customers in a personal, memorable way’.

With the rise in Web3 technology and clear evidence of a customer demographic altered by the effects of the pandemic, retailers have been seeking out ways to add value to the client experience in a non-gimmicky way. Futures analyst Victoria Buchanan proclaimed that for brands to thrive in the next decade and win the attention of shoppers they must ‘rethink their in-store journeys and re-enchant the physical space with a greater sense of curation, intentionality and attachment’. Since Dover Street Market reimagined the department store model as a ‘luxury bazaar filled with fast-changing creative installations where new and niche labels shared centre stage with anchor brands’ in 2014, the approach has been widely mimicked. Now, the concept of artful exhibitions and retail installations is commonplace. In May, Selfridges hosted Jacquemus’ first pop-up in London at its Corner Shop space whilst in November, we witnessed Dior’s whole-store takeover of Harrods.

Harrods has also joined in with the Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama collaboration. Alexander Wells-Greco, creative visual director at Harrods says that ‘we’re bringing Yayoi Kusama to life…‘Crafting Infinity’ also includes playful installations inside the store, spheres of all-surrounding colour and instantly immersive mirrored walls to mesmerise our customers.’ Key to this evolution is the role of the store as the ultimate public art destination. Seeking to fulfill the yearning for communal physical experiences, Harrods describes how ‘stores behave like galleries’ with its retail strategies designed to thrill all the senses.

In light of retailers favouring installation-style exhibitions, it is no coincidence that immersive art shows are also on the rise. The popularity of these shows has skyrocketed, particularly amongst those that explore the work of a singular artist. Marketed as providing visitors with the chance to step into the mind of icons such as Van Gough, Picasso, Monet and Klimt, guests can experience the artist's vision via multiple projections and an accompanying soundtrack. The store-focused promotion of the LV and Kusama collaboration certainly serves to self-actualise the artist’s vision to ‘create a Kusama world, which no one has ever done and trodden into.’ Whilst it hasn’t exactly offered anything revolutionary to the retail space, the brand invites customers to enter the artist’s making process through its visual installations.

In PwC’s Seeing is Believing 2019 report, 11250 immersive VR & AR specialist companies were identified in the UK alone. The report also forecast a £62.5bn boost to the UK economy and over 400,000 new jobs by 2030. A key element missing from Louis Vuitton’s retail strategy then, is the opportunity for interactivity. With mmersive entertainment districts like Outernet London, we should be expecting to see a large amount of immersive retail experiences. ‘At a time when physical retail has been under pressure, the arrival of Outernet London will return a sense of wonder to the capital’, said Matthew Drinkwater, Head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at London College of Fashion. ‘These giant digital backdrops will allow us to create engaging immersive retail experiences, where the collision of digital content with live entertainment provides a truly unique experience for each and every visitor’.

LCF’s Fashion Innovation Agency have already teamed up in collaboration with Outernet London and began to explore the potential for unlimited retail engagement. Aiming to demonstrate how physical garments and products captured within digital environments can create compelling fashion spectacles and retail possibilities, this project showcases personalised content that can evolve and adapt according to who enters the space, for a completely unique experience everytime.

As a result of macrotrends involving digital try-ons, interactive screens and other augmented shopping experiences, it is imperative that retailers incorporate technology into their physical strategies with consideration of the customers’ emotional journey. Doug Stephens, founder of brand consultancy Retail Prophet noted that we live in a world where the act of shopping is 'no longer something that you need to consciously go and do'. Certainly, purchasing behaviours have become enmeshed in our daily lives, from shopping through a TikTok post or using a voice-activated AI Alexa device to purchase an item from Amazon. Retailers have had to work harder and smarter to drive the emotional aspects of shopping. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Pantone, who turned its 2023 colour of the year (Viva Magenta) into a ‘cornucopia of multisensory experiences to help visitors explore their own feelings and emotions associated with magenta’, harnessing new-media to tap into emotions will reinstate their relationship with retail.

Retail therapy today need not involve facing the public in times of emotional hardship. With consumers able to continuously perform a stream of commodified behaviours through their click rates and add engagement, personalised algorithms return the favour with a stream of continuous content tailored to the user. The question retailers must ask is how do they break this cycle long enough to draw customers into stores? Or rather, how do they build on this cycle and enhance the experiencial aspect? The answer is through a subtle combination of artful spectacles, phygital design strategies and seamlessly augmented experiences.

Deeply intertwined between physical installations, marketing strategies and the emotions involved in the customer’s journey, phygital experiences will enable businesses to deliver growth and customer retention. This year, we should expect to see more marketing investment in physical retail displays intermingled with AR experiences. Importantly though, the staging of experiences need not ones that are sure to be photographed and disseminated across the web. ‘There’s a renewed interest in smaller-scale curation and education,’ agrees luxury retail consultant Robert Burke. Building on our collective familiarity with QR codes, physical players in the retail game can seize the opportunity for cross-reality retail design to focus on the personal journey of the customer through the creation of boundaryless and immersive retail experiences.