Emotional and interactive: these are the trends at EuroShop 2017
How can retailers give their shoppers an unrivalled customer journey? Which innovative concepts, technologies and designs support them in these efforts? This is what industry experts are currently learning from us at EuroShop. Until Thursday, 9 March our exhibitors presented the latest retail trends in seven Dimensions at the world’s No. 1 retail trade fair.
This is why we have taken the time to get an overview. Our impressive experience dimensions inspired the website visitors since Autumn 2016. Now the dimensions came to reality.
The Trends of a New Shopping Culture
Storytelling is one of the buzzwords moving retailers most at present. Physical actors customise the emotional message for their shoppers by making the customer journey a spectacular experience. We now reveal how exactly they do this!
- Shop Fitting & Store Design
Atmosphere, residence quality and attraction are at the centre of progressive shop fittings and store design. As consumers’ quality awareness rises so too their expectations regarding architecture and furnishings. These are expected to blend harmoniously, stage products and thereby tell a story that guides shoppers through the store.
- POP Marketing
Dovetailing of online and offline channels is the magic formula for sustainable POP marketing. Be it explanatory videos and live-chat options supporting shop assistants or 3D scanners as interactive changing cubicles: omni-channel solutions are conquering stores at the moment and can improve customer service.
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- Lighting
Light serves many functions for shopping such as guidance, accentuation and staging. Thanks to the latest LED technologies this has become a lot easier now. Warm light for fruit and vegetables or cool luminous colours in the frozen foods department: assortment-specific luminous colours positively influence the customer journey which turns them into emotionalising design tools.
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- Visual Merchandising
What used to be shop window dummies are display mannequins today. They stopped serving display-only purposes a long time agoand now form an integral part of visual merchandising today. Features such as customisable parts turn them into personalities in their own right with a high identification potential. This binds consumers to the goods on display.
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- Food Tech & Energy Management
For companies and, hence, also retailers, energy consumption is becoming an ever more important cost factor. Especially food retail requires plenty of electrical energy for refrigeration, air-condition and ventilation. Smart systems, however, can now leverage this resulting waste heat for heating outlets, for example.
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- Expo & Event Marketing
Those wanting to present something have to stage it. This truism not only applies to the site but also to the associated communication. This is why events are great sources of inspiration for retailers. Themes such as gamification or Augmented Reality embed products and services in a plot thereby making them more graspable for consumers.
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- Retail Technology
Nearly all dimensions are hard to imagine without digitalisation. Digitalisation can create unique customer journeys. We show some practical examples of how retailers can gear up for this technically – examples that we have also implemented ourselves at Messe Düsseldorf. After all, we too, are always working towards making our guests’ stay with us unforgettable.
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Experience Communications Trends at Messe Düsseldorf live
For almost a year now our colleagues have therefore been working flat out to launch exciting technologies in time for EuroShop; new technical features that will soon also be rolled out for our other events.
- D:VIS Visitor Information System
May I introduce myself: D:VIS! The philosophy underlying this visual Visitor Information System is that our visitors can also obtain all the necessary data related to their stay with us when the Service Points are very busy. Be it search functions with word completion and exhibitor listings or the product nomenclature that mirrors the complete diversity of the trade fair: D:VIS provides all of this data via a central database. Users can either upload this to their smartphone via QR-code or even have the information printed out at the terminals in the halls. Here exhibitors can book logo placements or advertising spaces thereby gaining exposure for potential customers. With the 34 D:VIS systems in total spread across the premises we also offer further functions – above all our interactive hall plan.
… and this can also do a whole lot more! With its Open-Source solution Open Street Map we have placed our exhibition halls in a global, geographic context. This option allows the hall plans to be accessible to other users of this software so that taxi drivers, for example, can pick up their customers at a precisely defined location. Regardless of where the user is at a given time – with our interactive plans they can quickly move through our halls with gestures using their smartphone or Tablet. At your discretion you can turn the maps and zoom into individual stands. Visitors can then also have the monitors at our premises navigate them to their desired destination – all conveniently.
- Location Based Services
Also brand new at EuroShop: the use of Location Based Services that we have integrated into the interactive App of the retail trade fair. This can be downloaded for free for iOS and Android. Within the App users can define focal interests on the basis of product categories. Exhibitors who have placed Beacons at their stands can send visitors in their vicinity push messages specifically tailored to their profiles or even guide these visitors to their stands right away. Not familiar with Beacons? Then let us recommend our blog post for EuroCIS 2016. Also see all functions of the new interactive App at a glance in this video:
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Sounds as if these were also attractive solutions for retail, doesn’t it? No wonder they were all launched for EuroShop! 😉
