The Experience Marketing Strategy Of Retail Industry Brings Economic Benefits.

Experience marketing in retail industry

Department store.

China's department stores are becoming more mature, and the business circles in large and medium-sized cities are also very concentrated. Most of them still adopt the traditional marketing mode.

Although the implementation tools of experiential marketing can be reflected in the department store, there are few experience designs for a certain theme of life. Most of them only stay in meeting the needs of consumers' feelings, feelings and actions, and do not lead to consumers' thinking about life.

The theme of activities usually only takes place around festivals, such as the theme day of Christmas, new year's day, Spring Festival and Mid Autumn Festival.

There are also theme activities around a certain lifestyle of consumers, such as the Wedding Expo, which will combine wedding car rental, wedding photography, wine, cloth toys, wedding utensils and other businesses to create a wedding environment experience.

The shortage is that spot activities are still raffle based, and there is no experience of integrating into the elements of newly married life to let consumers experience; products, brochures, and staff are mostly for promotion purposes, without considering the mood of consumers' marriage.

Supermarket.

Supermarkets in our country flock together for a time, Carrefour, Jusco, WAL-MART, Shanghai Lianhua and so on.

Supermarkets generally face mass consumers, and consumers are looking for tangible benefits.

Supermarkets tend to attract consumers by "the lowest city", "discounts" and "points for prizes", such as "the 50 kilometer, the cheapest goods".

From the experience point of view, supermarkets are similar to department stores. Supermarkets rarely have a unified theme, and thematic activities are limited to holidays.

In the communication with customers, most of them use one-way communication, not two-way communication. They only tell customers about product information. They just print the goods of the supermarket into pamphlets and distribute them to different customers.

Only a few large supermarkets will periodically select customers for round table meetings, explore a theme and customers, and understand the customers' feelings and pursuit of life.

That is to say, in addition to sense and action, emotions, thinking, and related experiences are not used in supermarkets.

Brand store.

The precise target group, inclusive of the brand connotation of consumers' personality and lifestyle, the environment that can be easily rendered, and the opportunity to communicate with customers in depth, have created many business opportunities for brand stores to use experience marketing.

It can be said that brand stores are the easiest retail formats to implement experiential marketing, and Starbucks and IKEA are more successful in the Chinese market.

The theme of Starbucks is to make friends and enjoy the third space of freedom. The theme of IKEA is a relaxed, fashionable and free way of life. Their experience is designed around a theme and aimed at various contact points.

However, most brand stores in China can seize the needs of consumers' personality and self actualization, but do not create experience process based on experiential marketing. In the environment, colors, music, lights, pictures and so on can not reflect the theme, and no slogans can lead to thinking and examination. Salesmen generally do not communicate with consumers in depth, which makes it difficult for consumers to have a sense of belonging.

Shopping center.

Shopping centers, as the highest level of retail industry, are more qualified to implement experiential marketing than supermarkets or department stores.

Shopping centers not only include other retail formats, but also break through traditional dining and shopping, and greatly increase entertainment elements.

In China, many shopping malls arrange business layout according to the golden ratio of dining 18%, entertainment 30% and retail 52%, and create experiential shopping patterns, including shopping circles, theme restaurants, entertainment kingdoms, jewelry cities, etc.

Shopping centers establish competitive advantages by shopping environment and thematic interactive activities. However, experience environment needs not only hardware but also music, lighting and odour.

Even though some shopping centers have provided consumers with experience in the interaction between vision and activity, they lack planning for people to think and integrate into life styles, which makes the experience not able to extend to the corner outside the home.

Experience marketing strategy in retail industry

Experiential economy is a sensory experience environment that consumers start from life and situations to shape consumers' pursuit of lifestyle, create ways of expressing consumers' emotions, inspire consumers to create inspirations, encourage them to participate in action and change the status quo, and ultimately enable consumers to find a sense of belonging in the same style of life.

Consumers are not only satisfied with products, but rather a lifestyle solution. They are even willing to pay a higher price for the satisfaction of emotional needs.

The implementation of experiential marketing in retail industry can be divided into three steps (see Figure 1): through experiential research and contact point design, we can grasp the perceptual thinking of consumers, and let consumers know what they want through product publicity and environmental atmosphere, so that consumers can realize themselves through communication with solutions.

Know what consumers want.

(1) experiential research.

Different from the traditional mode of research, the content of experiential research is customer's perceptual knowledge, simulating the customer experience process to ask questions.

For example, investigate the feeling: does this brand store give me a special sense of feeling? Survey emotion: whether I enter into this brand store can give me a feeling of pleasant mood; investigation action: whether the store intends to guide and interact with me; investigate and ponder whether this brand store intends to stimulate my association with certain things; investigate correlation: whether the customer who buys this brand is the same kind of person as I am.

In addition to questionnaires, we can paste slogans "please help us improve" in the stores. We should periodically pick up customers to form listening groups, conduct interviews, or conduct in-depth exchanges between customers and customers.

In addition to regular research on consumer research and sales among various departments within the company and sales teams, it is essential to quickly grasp the degree of popularity of customers and their pursuit of lifestyle changes, and stimulate new ideas.

(2) contact point design.

The contact point is to decompose the customer's experience process (feeling, thinking, action, and connection) in pre-sale, sale and after sale, and use different tools to implement marketing strategy.

Before sale, we can use the network, brochure and so on to let the customers perceive the theme of the store. When customers enter the store, they immediately feel the theme atmosphere of music, light and smell. When customers purchase desire, they should stimulate their creative thinking through product production, understand and solve problems, feel the way of life through the participation activities, show their self cognition and values; finally, through communicating with other consumers and service personnel in the environment, they will deeply appreciate the interaction and social status from the social and cultural significance, and make them happy to become a part of this group or culture.

In IKEA, the shopping mall is regarded as a completely self running sales machine, and the whole process of its operation is from the entry to the exit: the information desk, the plan chart, the product experience, the price tag, the record picking, the flat packaging, and the cashier.

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Let consumers know what they want.

(1) product publicity.

Before consumers think about it, they need to experience consumers' feelings and feelings through product publicity.

Starbucks has printed third spatial concepts in every brochure. Unlike general corporate propaganda, Starbucks promotes experience, not just products.

In addition to magazine advertising catalogues, brochures, product presentation, mascots and other methods, the Internet is a very useful way to experience.

Nowadays, many enterprises have already advertised in online magazines, such as magazines in ZCOM, imitating the scene atmosphere through story plots, and even meeting the needs that can not be realized in reality.

The website of the enterprise can also carry out the matching of the scheme (such as Dulux's color matching system), the network virtual experience is an inevitable trend of development, and even IBM, SUN and so on have been stationed in the online game "second life", and the retail enterprises can make full use of the virtual world shopping or entertainment experience.

(2) environmental atmosphere.

The environment is a unique advantage of the retail industry. Whether it is only a few dozen square meters of brand shops, or a huge shopping center, as long as all tools can create an atmosphere under a unified theme, consumers can be integrated into the scene.

The tools of environment creation include music, lighting, smell, pictures, layout, etc.

For example, the whole Starbucks is like a cup of coffee: a dark red coffee wall, a light yellow partition, or a deep or shallow coffee table chair and sofa, plus a dull yellow light, surrounded by the aroma of coffee, and then a mellow and lubricate coffee. The whole person seems to have dissolved into a cup of strong coffee.

Jazz on the ear makes people feel happy and happy.

The paintings on the walls are colorful and colorful, giving people a sense of fashion and individuality.

Everything in the coffee shop is designed around the coffee culture.

Let consumers realize themselves.

(1) solutions.

Self actualization is the highest level of Maslow's demand and the most crucial part of experiential marketing strategy.

At present, many retailers in China's retail industry know what consumers really want, but unfortunately, they still sell products.

If the product is sold as a product, it can only take into account the rational needs of consumers.

Experience in experiential marketing is a solution that consumers need to think and try to get.

This scheme is unique, and is a combination of lifestyle and consumer preferences.

What businesses need to do is to introduce and display products' culture, function and collocation scheme, so as to help them find the best plan for them.

For example, IKEA makes furniture stores a place for consumers to look for inspiration and design ideas. Consumers can think about the way of collocation according to the price of each product, material size, color, origin and so on.

Starbucks allows consumers to choose different flavors such as espresso, milk type, vanilla or almond, and consumers can choose to buy Coffee punching machine and coffee beans to go home.

The hairstyle instruction of popular beauty lets customers design hairstyles by themselves, and changes according to different occasions and mood.

(2) related experience.

To satisfy customers' needs for thinking, action and connection, sales solutions must be sold and the way of life expressed by the theme should be highlighted through interactive communication with customers.

Relational experience is the highest level of experience, enabling consumers to find a sense of belonging and achieve self-worth. It is the result of all experience strategies.

In the retail industry, personnel communication can play a great role in promoting the associated experience.

Experience communication involves not only the product itself and solutions, but also the consumer's mood, the way to communicate, and the communication between consumers.

Starbucks employees treat their customers like their friends. They will enthusiastically introduce the origin and type of coffee, the different food collocation of coffee, the different tastes of coffee, try to get the names of familiar guests, and chat with customers for half an hour to integrate themselves into the environment of making friends.

Starbucks integrates everything into the third space, so that consumers can enjoy it freely.

The interior tables and chairs are very convenient for making friends, and with the dark atmosphere of the coffee shop, the communication between customers becomes very natural.

While IKEA has adopted different ways of personnel communication, IKEA has promoted the pformation of stores into an ideal place for the whole family to go out. In order to create a comfortable atmosphere and services, IKEA's waiters never take the initiative to sell to customers, but when customers need to consult, they will immediately provide you with professional solutions.