Shopping 2020: What will tomorrow’s POS look like?
As a joint project of marketing agency Serviceplan, Vitrashop Group Visplay, Ansorg, and Vizona, the innovative ‘weShop’ project has been created in Munich. The joint design combines shop fitting, lighting and digital ‘shoppability’, and provides exciting insights into the point of sale of the future.
Sweeping changes await bricks-and-mortar retailing. Driven by the competition of e-commerce, changing consumer behaviour and the increased demand for entertainment, shops are developing into activity realms to be experienced. The expenditure and effort to attract customers, and to produce a lasting brand experience has increased at a tearing pace. Static shop concepts with wide assortments are quickly giving way to changing merchandising, smaller assortments, scenes set for the goods areas and radiant highlight areas. Numerous POS displays and touchpads show the increasing integration of online media into bricks-and-mortar retailing, and it will continue in the future of shopping in 2020.
Europe’s largest independent communication agency, Serviceplan Group, gets closer to the heart of future trends in commerce and has now, together with the retail specialists, Visplay, Ansorg and Vizona, set up a store in which visitors can gain an insight into visionary retail design and technology.
Automated retailing along the customer’s journey
The clear endeavours of bricks-and-mortar retailing lie in the combining of all of the advantages of a shop and e-commerce. By means of modern RFID and beacon technologies, customers and goods can be identified. In that way, orientation according to the individualised customer profiles and needs can take place and sales can be automated.
‘weShop’ has technical features at the various customer touch points, which refer to the specific needs of the customer, and create additional ones. In that way, the digital presentation of goods and prices in the shop window, and in the entrance area, adjusts to the customer’s gender as well as to the information on their digital customer card. Inside the store, the customer can scan selected goods with a smartphone and select them in accordance with their size and the desired colour. Also, the fitting room provides pure service, automatically recognising which items of clothing are to be tried on. On a touchscreen, alternatives and matching accessories are immediately offered, which, at the press of a button in the mirror, can be immediately viewed on the customer’s body. Finally, payment is also made quickly and simply without long queuing at the cash desk: at the goods counter the automatically identified purchase is confirmed, the amount minus a personal customer discount is deducted from the customer account.
Wireless lighting control by tablet
With EASY, the digital lighting control system, Ansorg brings the future of retail lighting into ‘weShop’. As a core instrument in retail design, lighting must creatively set the scene and be able to adapt quickly to changed merchandising, times of the day, and changing customer flows. The EASY control system provides maximum flexibility and design for the retailer. All of the luminaires in the weShop as well as the central luminous ceiling are fitted with intelligent control modules. By means of Bluetooth technology and an app developed for it all of the luminaires can be activated and controlled easily by a table and their light intensity and light colour temperature can be regulated individually. By touch, luminaires are interconnected, light scenes are created, and sequences proceeding automatically are programmed. In that way, the retailer can repeatedly create new, attractive realms to be experienced, helping to set them apart from the competition.
In the ‘weShop’, a change of colour on the edge of the luminous ceiling and colour-variable lighting contours on the display walls form additional eye-catching elements.
Ansorg has shown the possibilities and dynamic effects of the EASY lighting control app. The standard scene represents appealing boutique lighting with full light intensity, and a slightly cool light colour temperature, of 3500k in the shop, and 4000k in the window area. The centrally installed luminous ceiling ensures bright and pleasant ambient lighting. It decisively influences the lighting atmosphere of the shop. Dimming of the luminous ceiling, for example, lowers the basic brightness, and the accent on the goods displayed becomes more focused. The cyan peripheral area on the luminous ceiling, and on the display walls, imparts additional accents. A second lighting scene shows warm ambient lighting, support by red accents along the edges of the luminous ceiling and the display walls. Running around the luminous ceiling is a black ceiling duct with accent spotlights, which are directed towards the display walls and the advice counter. By pressing a button, a programmed sequence can be started, in which dynamic lighting effects generate an exciting atmosphere. The light intensity of the shop window luminaires is varied alternately, producing a dynamic and exciting scene that makes clear how, by means of light the perception, the presentation of the goods changes and the experience of the brand is intensified.
‘weShop’ shows how bricks-and-mortar retailing can assert itself and even become stronger in the future: the customer experiences all of the advantages of the digital shopping world, such as simplicity, flexibility, and individualisation – in the shop. Flexible merchandising and lighting systems, as well as creative retailing concepts, lead to dynamic realms to be experienced which guarantee shopping fun.
