Visual Merchandising: The projector of Brick & Mortar outlets

In the era of e-commerce, the stores are having a huge impact on consumer behavior and ultimately on sale. Due to rapidly growing user friendly e-commerce interfacing, customer satisfaction is at high level but at the same time consumer’s expected ‘delight’ level is increasing which is indirect impact of e-commerce interfacing adaptability and which simultaneously educating the consumer about product’s features virtually.

When we see a beautiful garden in front of a house, we form some opinion about interior of that house. Here is the opportunity lies for Brick and Mortar outlets in the competitive world of e-commerce.

In the similar manner visual merchandising is an important factor to attract the customer, to promote the product etc. which may results into increased sale of the store.

There are some elements which need to be considered for visual merchandising:

Windows displays-a specific space for displaying the products to attract the customer
Store layout-Strategic use of store layout for managing floor space & items shelf display
In-store design-store interior majorly focusing shelf architect, wall color etc.
Promotional signage-highlighting the persuasive message, offers or advertisement of particular product.
Store atmosphere-ambience with respect to natural light, air freshener & fragrances, neatness & cleanliness etc.
Lighting-light arrangement to focus on product display, promotional signage’s etc.
In store Music, etc.

The combination of these elements may vary as per the sector’s Product features to be promoted.

In this digital world, even Brick and mortar can’t be excluded, as in one of the e-commerce site (GoDaddy) advertisement mentioned “Godaddy pe apna dhanda leke ja online, customer ko dukaan leke aao fulltime”. While taking the business online it is advised to focus on product promotion not on Outlet promotion.

As per the survey conducted by Daphne Hawland (2018) published on retaildive.com, mentioned that 27% of apparel sales are now online.

A retailer has to find out the leveraging differences between outlets and e-commerce websites and accordingly visual merchandising elements to be considered.

There is a need of apparel merchandiser to register themselves on e-commerce as we have seen that so many restaurants registered them on food delivery e-commerce website to make themselves visible to the customers.

For online visual merchandising there are some different elements to be considered:

Registration
Atmospheric (Style presentation, Background Colour)
Web navigation (Search Engine-Strategic use of keywords)
Web graphics (3D presentation Format-how an idea or service is feel by customer that demonstration)
Product Demonstration (Model, Dummy), etc.

To sustain in the competition, both the channels (Brick & Mortar and E-commerce) should analyze the reasons of being choose by customer and then decide the Visual Merchandising strategy for their offerings. Looking at the current scenario, the journey has begun as retail to e-tail.