The Art of Commerce: Part III

Impact on CE

In parts one and two of this mini series, we’ve explored the changing landscapes of retail. Part three investigates the place of CE in this new environment. Many of these developments, in particular tech-driven ones, are bound to happen within consumer electronics first or at least very early on by default.

Many of our customers and partners have noticed the ongoing modifications to traditional commerce too, and we are sharing the insights with you so read on for the manifestations of emerging trends in the world of CE.

MediaMarkt Xperion

The Saturn store at Hansaring, Cologne, used to be the world’s biggest record – and later CD – store. But those days are gone. Today, the building serves as an entertainment hub. Named Xperion, the 3000m² gaming and e-sports experience centre now offers multiple stages and gaming stations.

In his interview with welt.de, CEO Florian Gietl says about the restructuring:

“It is no secret that the physical music and entertainment market has lost strength in recent years. It’s still a huge share, but in the long run, not really working in the framework of a dedicated building anymore. That’s why we decided on a new form of entertainment: gaming, which has long been one of our fastest growing categories.”

Partners of MediaMarkt have designated event areas in the building to display their brand and products. The venue offers space for anything from workshops to competitions to concerts and other live stage events. Gietl describes it as a ‘little Gamescon‘, a permanent tradeshow of sorts, with the difference that you can actually buy what is being advertised.

He sees a bright future for brick and mortar but only in an omnichannel setup, which combines online and offline retail. A major new category of interest is iHealth: fitness trackers, smart watches, blood monitoring devices and so forth.

Experiencing Devialet

Shopping is more than a transactional activity. In Australia, Aqipa launched a tour in cooperation with Devialet, which involves moving a speaker demonstration cabin from location to location to create hype around the brand.

In the future, we are planning to install in-store ‘sound experience rooms’ in cooperation with Devialet to properly showcase to customers what highest fidelity sound is so that music can be listened to in the way it was intended to be experienced.

Amazon goes offline

Even long-time pure player Amazon is now embracing brick and mortar concepts – with some interesting tweaks. Across the US, they have established a solid network of several types of walk-in stores. Amazon 4-star, for instance, brings curated customer favourites and top-rated products to the physical shopping world, where people can try devices before they buy them.

On a side note, Amazon’s food stores such as Amazon Fresh incorporate some more promising features: They let you scan the items you want to buy in an app so you can skip checkout and won’t have to wait in line. That’s right: You can simply cross off your shopping list and leave. In addition, Alexa is present throughout the stores to help you find what you’re looking for.

Euronics sound experience

The Arnsberg Neheim Euronics store established a so-called “sound experience room” on-site. The eyecatching addition was conceptualised by OBV Objektbau in cooperation with electronics retailer Berlet.

A tunnel made from twenty 55″ Q-LED screens broadcasting in synchronicity leads visitors into the audiovisual playground, where Dolby Atmos sound and a purposefully black interior await to create a cinematic atmosphere for full immersion. Equipped with high-quality soundbars, subwoofers and special acoustics, the room allows customers to test all aspects of these gadgets.

The latest thing

Braun Audio will soon be moving into The Latest, a concept store in Berlin marketed as “the innovation platform of tomorrow”. The store exhibits a curated selection of innovative products by both startups and young, already well-established brands in the fields of technology, fashion, fitness, mobility, beauty and more.

It’s a place for discoverers looking for special experiences. We spoke to Dhi Matiole Nunes, one of the founders of The Latest and head of retail at Avantgarde (leading global brand experience agency), about the latest developments in the retail world.

What is the greatest customer benefit in the digitalisation of retail?

The interconnectedness between online and offline channels creates countless sources of data that can be very useful for both retailers and manufacturers in different areas. Through sensors in our store, the data collection via social media and website as well as the through performance marketing, we learn daily about the interest and needs of our customers and their social behaviour, among other things. Selected data is made available to our brand partners so that they can also benefit from it and act upon it. To put it more concretely, the data obtained helps, for example, to optimise marketing expenditure, to develop more targeted content for social media and to improve the experience in the store. Without the data and its correct interpretation, we would certainly spend a significantly higher amount of money today on measures that would not be efficient and would have a negative impact on profitability. We find it hard to believe that many retailers today still do not even know the customer frequency in their shops, let alone demographic characteristics and other important key figures. This will increasingly play a role between success and failure in the future.

What is THE most important reason to still have physical stores these days?

The most important reason to still operate physical stores today is to offer customers an experience that cannot be replicated digitally. Online, you have many beautiful videos and pictures to get to know a product in a playful way and the possibility to familiarise yourself with technical data and other people’s opinions in detail. However, emotions play an important role in the purchasing process as well as the bond between people and brand, and emotions can be strongly stimulated by activating the senses. A [physical] shop is the perfect place to activate all the senses and offer them an unforgettable experience. These experiences are then shared with friends and followers, turning visitors into brand ambassadors. This explains why even the most powerful online retailer in the world has been using physical and pop-up shops since 2015.

What was the biggest innovation in e-commerce at Avantgarde/The Latest in the last 12 months?

The Latest has only been around for 8 months (November 2020), and within 3 months, the concept was taken off paper so to speak and implemented in Berlin. We are still at the beginning and have a lot of work ahead of us. Our webshop is just being finished, and in addition, we are busy developing an omnichannel platform for the perfect staging of newly launched products.

Avantgarde has been active in the retail sector for many years and not only operates physical shops worldwide for various brands, but also webshops and SoMe channels. Over the last 12 months, the Avantgarde Group has developed a modular AR platform that is used by Volkswagen, Vodafone and Germany’s Next Topmodel, among others, to activate customers/viewers during the pandemic. This has now made AR accessible to all brands with little effort.

Thank you for the interview!

Interested in more business and brand insights? Then catch up on our previous 3-parter on challenger brands.