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RETAIL OUTLET: EMOTIONS ON STAGE |
The experience economy places new responsibilities on sales-managers. The product or the material should be able to arouse agreeable emotive reactions and they should be able to ‘talk’ to the architect (or to the final consumer) and express its cultural significance. But how can all that be communicated? Now more than ever sales strategies must be redefined in light of new purchasing and consumption behaviour. These are extremely complex tasks that cannot be performed through a simple exchange of material values. In other word, the purchase needs a context (the retail outlets) and individual rituals. The salesmen (the interaction agents) have the delicate task of facilitating intimacy, of helping the process of getting closer to the product, thus contributing to a responsible and satisfactory choice.
According to B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, authors of the book “The Experience Economy - Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage” (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass., 1999), the replacement of the service economy by the experience economy implies a new theoretical approach and a radical reorganization of the retail outlet. The two US economists therefore suggest the metaphor of the shop as a stage where the shop assistants are the players and the client is the guest of honour. The emphasis is put on keywords such as entertaining, culture, escape and, certainly, aesthetic enjoyment. The moment of supply becomes an unforgettable experience using these components to re-define the retail outlet and the salesman’s behaviour. The consumer must be brought close to the product with great respect for his reactions: he is a guest and an active participant. The emotional dimension becomes crucial: purchasing takes place only if the client is positively struck on an emotional level.
This approach, called also ‘frontier marketing’ has had a certain success in United States and even if its applicability to other contexts remains to be verified, it is worthwhile to quote its main elements, such as ‘store branding’, 'shopping entertainment’ and ‘poly-sensorial experience of the retail outlet’. These are the elements that characterize more and more the interaction between consumer and product. The retail outlet becomes an occasion for meeting and relaxing, for the supply of various services and moreover it must represent the ideal context for presenting the product or the brand in order to provoke the client’s attention and push him to buy it. More frequently the brand-store also becomes a showroom for other goods and other similar companies that contribute to creating a glamorous and sensual effective atmosphere.
In this way the Marazzi Group initiative of opening a new exhibit area on the periphery of Bologna becomes an example. The concept store is situated in an old refurbished industrial building, well restored by the architect Maurizio Navone, with a 2000 square meters floor space, organized on two levels. Next to porcelain tiles and sanitary-ware from various companies (both from the Marazzi group and outside), the shop displays a range of goods and services: textiles, curtains, table cloths and sponges, furnishing accessories, rattan sofas, perfumes, essences, precious books, and even a travel agency and a cafeteria. However, the most representative element with respect to our issue is, without any doubt, the hammam, by definition a place of well-being.
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