Visual Merchandising: In-store Communication to Enhance Customer Value

Buying behavior is a process that is conditioned by a complex receptive system, originating with the products physical impulses (features such as function, size, packaging, and brand), its location (store, layout, display) and price. The interaction of these factors culminates in the customers final choice. In fact, through communication customers assume and alter their attitudes. In other words, industry and distribution together set a communication process in motion with the customer, and the store becomes the place and the channel through which this interaction occurs.The book addresses this topic with a managerial mark. The takeoff point is a redefinition of the role the store plays in communicating and enhancing the identity of the brand and the store itself. From there, the author moves on to consider visual merchandising as a managerial tool to use for establishing a dialogue with the customer. Directions, goals, and tools of visual merchandising are analyzed and evaluated with a business approach to store management, with the aim of understanding what works in the complex task of balancing conflicting needs. On one hand the company wants to maximize profits and productivity, expand the sales areas that customers visit, rationalize replenishment, curtail shoplifting, support sales staff - and enhance the offering too. On the other hand, customers want to simplify the purchase process and save time, but at the same time they gather information, seek out stimuli and ideas, and get psychological gratification from freely and actively taking charge of their choices.