New multisensorial stores: the Retailtainment

The importance of this new phenomenon in Retail Marketing

What RETAILTAINMENT does mean?

Retailtainment it is a term composed by two words: retail and entertainment.It is a strategic approach that aims to combine shopping with entertainment opportunities. An experience projected in order to offer entertainment while offering a product.In this way, the shopping experiences goes beyond the simple purchase and it turns into a 360 degrees entertainment experiences. Why “The RETAILTAINMENT” Recent studies showed that consumers are more likely to be attracted by those Retailers that are able to understand the internal elements that go beyond the product sale. As follows a new trend takes life all around the world, taking different forms: coffee shops and restaurants are opened in the store, spas, play spaces, animations and some other areas designed for virtual experiences.

The wide range of inner stores leisure activities it’s one of the phenomes that gained more visibility and functionality during the past few years.

>> From costumer’s point of view, the RETAILTAINMENT phenomenon increases product’s value and in the same time strengthens the competitive advantages.

>> On the other side, the range of hedonistic services facilitate customer’s attraction and interaction, increasing in the same time the brand identity and acquiring a different character that will remain alive in costumer’s memory.

The shopping experience becomes in this way a journey across the satisfaction of recreational needs and the store becomes a crossbreeding between the sale space and recreational space. The winning formula? Ideal will be finding a balance between the active brand interaction activities and those more passive related to goods purchase.

Moreover, it is important remembering that RETAILTEINMENT it’s a big response to e-commerce competition, where the user is entertained only throughout two senses (hearing and sight), meanwhile during the in-store shopping experience the customer is entertained across all five senses so that it could be totally involved.

RETAILTAINMENT examples

DISNEY

The giant Disney is one of the biggest examples of RETAILTAINMENT, applied in its stores all over the world.

Disney’s senior manager of communications, Shawn Turner stated: “It is essential to propose an experience that is going to be beyond a toy purchase.

The creative director, Richard Bayed declared: “It is essential to build a brand experience that will be remembered even after living the store”, combing shopping with the opportunity of trying the product.

APPLE

APPLE’S stores function because of their experiential aspect: for example consumers can try the products in-store before the purchase. The success of this strategy is proved by the fact that Apple gains the highest ROI per square meter, compared with other retail chains.

IKEA

The Swedish giant brought the RETAILTAINMENT at extreme by launching a pop-up do-it-yourself restaurant in the London’s most trendy area. They name it “the Dining Club”. Combining In this way, the shopping experience with the food experience.

The difference? Customers are able to prepare their own dinner in the kitchen, assisted and observed by professional chefs, having free access to a multisensorial store that involves them at 360 degrees.

The future is in RETAILTAINMENT: the store becomes a real theatre with environments  especially created and studied to offer a moment of total escape.