Digital Fashion – How technology is revolutionising the in-store experience.

The in-store experience has been under-going some seismic changes to revolutionise the fashion retail industry and move closer to digital fashion. Technologies such as beacons, interactive purchase points, integrated social media products and in-store analytics have began to change how fashion stores engage with their customers (Silverman, 2015). Already technology has found its way into some stores, showing a glimpse of what is possible with the right marketing strategy. As store atmosphere is able to solicit consumer purchase decisions (Michon et al., 2005) by adopting the right environment in relation to the brand, correct technology plays a key role in the development of the most efficient and revolutionary retail stores (Pantano, 2014).

It is crucial for fashion brands and retailers to not just invest into technology to follow suit. The challenge is to enhance the shoppers in-store experience without spamming them with technology and making things more difficult and challenging then they need to be. In this blog post we look at the ways that fashion retailers are tackling these challenges.

In-Store Interaction

EBay has been making huge technological improvements to store interactivity since 2014. The retail giant has developed a interactive mirror that can be implemented into store fronts and used to adapt changing rooms. The video below explains the purpose of the technology and how it is revolutionising the in-store experience.

Shoppers can use these interactive mirrors to find products they like, browse the complete stock of a fashion retailer, watch runway campaigns and even order drinks. The idea of in-store interaction is aimed to stimulate a positive shopping experience (Oh and Petrie, 2012) in a fun new way that brings the online world into the physical. The benefits of interactive technology are manifold (Dennis et al., 2010) and can be applied to multiple aspects of fashion stores depending on size and environment.

Technology creating engagement

Beacons are small bluetooth enabled transmitters that are being placed in stores to allow connectivity with the consumers mobile device, dependant on if the consumer has downloaded the store application. Retailers such as John Lewis have introduced this technology to improve their in-store marketing, enabling shoppers to receive targeted messages on promotions and personalised offers. OVS, an Italian fashion retailer has also introduced beacon engagement into their stores but have looked at beacons as more intrusive than good and only used them to offer advanced product information rather than promotions.

Virtual reality may sound like a gamers idea of heaven but it has already been found in some unexpected retail stores. Marks & Spencer introduced VR with Oculus Rift to their London and Leeds store in September 2015 to complement their new range. Customers put on the Oculus Rift headset and were able to create their own room using M&S products in a virtual atmosphere. It helps to offer a new and improved service to retail customers (Poncin and Mimoun, 2014) and transform the usual in-store experience. The technology may only be used to promote special events and not as a on-going store transformation trend as it can be very expensive and at the moment retailers are yet to be provided with the full benefits of the technology due to development priorities in other sectors.

With technology revolutionising the in-store experience fashion retailers need to identify the implications the technology can bring to a store before deciding on buying into the technology.

Implications

• Difficulty – Changing retail stores to a technology haven may give the store a beautifully aesthetic look but it can also  make the most simple of tasks like picking up a physical item and trying it on even more difficult for users who aren’t as tech savvy.

• Costs – Training new staff to use the technology and teach consumers how to use it is time consuming and can create more problems then solutions. If the system decides to go down how is the store going to run?

• Human Interaction – The more technology in-store the less their is human involvement and this leads to less jobs for people, less help for customers and can make stores feel too clinical. Older consumers may find this frustrating and decide to take their business elsewhere due to unfamiliarity.

Overall it would seem that integration is the biggest deciding factor to technologically revolutionise the fashion store experience. With so many options it is difficult to know where to start and is vital that the technology doesn’t overburden the consumer but instead complements their shopping journey.

Recommendations 

The digital future of retail – http://iesrj.com/journal/index.php/iesrj/article/view/87/81

Adopting smart in-store technology through the TAM model  – http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17543266.2016.1177737

References

Dennis, C, Newman, A, Michon, R, Brakus, J, Wright, L. (2010). The mediating effects of perception and emotion: digital signage in mall atmospherics. Vol. 17. Issue 3. pp. 205-215

Michon, R, Chebat, J, Turley, L. (2005). Mall atmospherics: The interaction effects of the mall environment on shopping behaviour. Vol. 58. Issue 5. pp. 576-583

Oh, H, Petrie, J. (2012). How do storefront window displays influence entering decisions of clothing stores? Vol. 19 pp. 27-35

Pantano, E. (2014). Innovation driver in retail industry. Journal of Information Management. Vol. 34. pp.344-350

Poncin, I, Mimoun, M. (2014). The impact of “e-atmospherics” on physical stores. Vol. 21. Issue 5. pp. 851-859

Silverman, A. (2015). [Online] Predictions 2016: The digital store engagement surprise. Available at: http://blogs.forrester.com/adam_silverman/15-11-11-predictions_2016_the_digital_store_engagement_surprise Last accessed: 8th May 2016.