Retail marketing establishments are going through a complete makeover as it shifts focus from the traditional big box stores and brick and mortar stores to the trendier flash retailing. The idea is to set-up an impromptu store known as a pop-up shop or pop up store or temporary retail store to attract consumers and bring them closer to brands. The trend began in the early nineties when retailers across the globe from London to Tokyo and from Los Angeles to New York City started setting up temporary retail spaces for selling all types of merchandise. The desire to create close consumer engagement and offer them more exciting options for shopping prompted retailers to come up with pop up stores. The stores are ideal for those trying to gain mileage from experiential marketing as it helps to set up a store where consumers gather.
Instead of trying to drive the consumer to the store at a fixed location, the concept of marketing through pop up stores provides immense flexibility in marketing. You can set up shop at places most frequented by consumers and take the brands and products to their doorsteps. The trend has caught up with merchants and businesses of all sizes. Even companies that focus exclusively on online selling are also eager to set up a pop-up shop which clearly shows that the trend is here to stay. Although the store set up is temporary, it creates a long-lasting impression with potential customers as you can uphold your brand attributes through physical engagement. If you are wondering, what caused such popularity of pop up shops; you must look inside the marketing phenomenon that comes with a lot of benefits.
The goals of setting up pop up shops
Revenue generation, customer engagement, and brand awareness are the goals for merchants who want to set up pop up stores. However, you must focus on any one goal around which you must build your marketing campaign. By knowing the central purpose, it becomes easy to make decisions about promotion strategies and the design of the store. The goals will differ according to the size of business because for small businesses revenue generation is more important although they would also like to gather feedback about the brand. For larger business houses, brand positioning by delighting customers could be the reason for setting up the store that would also surprise consumers.
The goals would depend on several factors like whether it is a new brand or it is a case of rebranding. It could relate to the new product launch of an existing brand, and it might even be the urge to venture out into new geographical areas. Even inventory clearance could be another reason for setting up a temporary shop.
Whatever might be the goal, let us look at the benefits that you could derive by setting up a temporary flash store.
An added stream of revenue
It does not cost much to set up a pop-up shop, and it can be an additional source of income for those exclusively relying on online sales. With minimum investment, you can experiment with a new channel of sales, and if you can execute it well, you could earn some good profits too.
Allow customers to get a feel of the products
Although information about products is available in plenty on the internet, online buyers would still lament about the lack of opportunity of having a feel of the product they intend to buy. Even visitors to brick and mortar stores would like to gather as much information as possible by browsing the internet to know about the product before they go to the store. By setting up a temporary store to display the products, you give consumers the opportunity of engaging offline before they venture into buying online.
Create a sense of urgency to push sales
Since pop up stores have a limited time of existence, it creates a sense of urgency among customers who know that it is now or never for them. Consumers get limited time to interact with brands and products. The limited period of availability helps to create a feeling of scarcity because customers fear that they might not get a second chance to buy it and this acts favorably in pushing up sales. The lack of time drives customers to purchase products as soon as they can as they are skeptical of missing it if they act late.
Take your business to customers
Online companies have to research thoroughly about customers to target them effectively, and business owners are well aware of customer habits and the places they frequent. The experience of customers could help to set up a shop at some place where you know the demographic conditions and can match the expectations of customers to drive sales. That online products are now right in front of them would not only surprise customers but would also encourage them to buy it promptly.
Customer education
When you are launching a new product, you would like to gauge how customers accept it and how the marketing collaterals support it. It might be that you want to test waters by launching a campaign for booking pre-orders before taking up full-scale manufacturing and by setting up a pop-up shop you get an opportunity of providing a live demo to customers who can also see and feel it. You can walk them through and understand how the product performs and what changes might be necessary.
The most important contribution of pop up shops is that it provides an ideal platform for carrying out an experiential marketing campaign for brand activation. Customers can test the brand in their ways as they can explore it from various angles and form an opinion about it. The exercise adds immense value to the brand that starts enjoying the confidence of customers which goes a long way in bringing business gains that could have taken years to achieve, if at all.
Guest post courtesy of Alexander Fernandise. Alexander has written many articles on different categories like technology, business, Seo etc