“Retail is dead. Unless it is reinvented.” Experts agree on this. As a result of digitalisation and convenience, where, how and when customers buy has changed significantly, to the detriment of brick-and-mortar retail.
Zumtobel, 4DMagic and Kochstrasse are offering retailers an integrative “New Retail” solution: a powerful synthesis of smart technology and unique customer experiences based on neuropsychological insights. With new creativity and the goal of revolutionising the shopping experience in brick-and-mortar retail, the three industry leaders from the fields of shop lighting, retail media and neuromarketing have joined forces in a groundbreaking collaboration.
New Retail starts in customers’ brains
While online retail allows us to escape to our individual comfort bubbles, brick-and-mortar retail often still communicates “one size fits all” messages with little information. This is where New Retail comes into play, delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time and combining this with the sensory perception of products to create a shopping experience that is miles ahead of online retail. New Retail doesn’t start at the POS, but in the customers’ brains.
The concept combines innovative hardware and software solutions with a dynamic, neuroscientific approach to customer engagement. Camera systems record customers’ age, gender and mood anonymously and in compliance with GDPR. This data then drives dynamic lighting scenarios and digital signage content in real time – perfectly tailored to the surroundings, stock levels and customer behaviour.
Individually tailored scenarios
There are endless possible New Retail scenarios: from lighting scenarios tailored to each individual that automatically direct spotlights on specific product groups depending on the customer, through to messages on displays that recommend products based on a combination of weather, time of day, gender, age, customer mood and data from the merchandise management system.
With this integrative solution, the three partners are creating a new commercial reality: a vibrant and adaptive retail sector that continues to develop dynamically – creating an inviting, individually tailored shopping experience that goes far beyond just the products on offer.
“We live in a time where algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. In the future, brick-and-mortar retail spaces have the potential to go beyond mere transactions and offer an even more emotive shopping experience,” explains Roland Gowick, Head of Global Key Account Retail at Zumtobel. “With New Retail, we combine intelligent AI technology and neuropsychological insights with our lighting expertise to create personalised and engaging content that responds to individual customer needs in real time. For customers, this leads to an increased dopamine release in the brain, while for retailers, it leads to an increase in products found in shopping baskets.”
An example of how this can be implemented: Sabine, 37, enters a large multisport shop after work on a rainy day. The system recognises her stressed mood and shows her, for example, the latest yoga products – with images and terms that are precisely tailored to the target group based on neuroscientific findings.
