Connecting with consumers is essential to the success of any retail business in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Traditionally, consumers use product and price differences as the key factors in choosing retail outlets. While these differences are important, buyers are increasingly affected by other factors such as the atmosphere of the purchase environment.
The term atmospherics is often used to describe the physical retail-store factors that can be studied and consciously controlled by a retailer to alter the ambiance and mood of a store’s environment. Techorating, a similar term, refers to the incorporation of technology as a design element to expand the look and feel of the overall decorative theme.
Both atmospherics and techorating are used as marketing tools to create value in commercial spaces where the background creates a differential advantage. In fact, in some cases the atmosphere is the primary product that attracts customers and influences their purchasing behavior.
Digital signage offers several unique opportunities to enhance the atmospherics of an environment in order to maximize a store’s potential:
1) Serve as an attention-creating medium
Atmospherics is part of the overall branding and image of a company, which is designed to set the company apart from its competitors in a positive way. By designing attractive artificial environments with the use of digital displays, the aesthetic stimuli appeal to the target market by creating a product display that captivates and draws customers in.
2) Serve as an informational medium
Visual merchandising through the use of digital signage can help communicate information in a multitude of ways. Retailers can influence consumer decision-making by engaging customers in a dynamic way with instant, measurable results such as incentivizing purchases, promoting a slow-moving item, running flash sales, offering discounts to people who check-in via location-based apps, and using social media to interact with the customer and enrich their overall shopping experience.
3) Serve as an affect-creating medium
All retail stores utilize atmospherics, however subtle they may be. In order to produce positive affect though, the phenomena of atmospherics and techorating must be properly balanced to unlock the target consumer’s purchasing potential. After all, a positive shopping experience can be quickly ruined by an environment that is too aggressive – such as music that is too loud or content that is of poor quality. Customized, full-motion graphics presented on large-format digital displays offer the necessary elements for creating an attractive imagery of the lifestyle that a retailer is looking to promote, which optimizes sales by subconsciously influencing the customer’s attitude.
Digital signage offers a flexibility and adaptability that is unparalleled in the world of marketing by allowing customer’s to have personalized brand experiences. By using digital signage to enhance the atmospherics of a retail space, companies can increase conversion rate of browsers to buyers and subsequently deliver information that will engage the viewer and give them a reason to come back.
Contact us to learn more about how you can create a positive retail atmospherics through the use of digital signage.