Retail design: A new discipline

Abstract

This paper has the aim to address Retail Design as a new research and education discipline that because of its multidisciplinarity asks for a holistic approach. Although retailing as commerce is timeless, Retail Design is one of the most challenging new fields of design, embracing both design disciplines of architecture, industrial design and communication design as well as social science disciplines such as environmental psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology and marketing/management. The term ‘retail design’ encompasses all aspects of the design of the physical store as well as, in a technological sense, a virtual store: ranging from store frontage, fascia and signage, through to the internal elements of equipment, merchandising, display, lighting, in-store communications, point of sale and finishes. Retail design also involves an understanding not only of what will work aesthetically within the space, but how it will perform functionally and commercially, how it can be built to budget and meet the many regulations governing the use of a public space. Retail design is the touch-point for responsibly developing and extending communications between brand and customer. In the world of retail, consumer experience has become the primary issue; the consumer’s journey through the shopping mall, the individual retail outlet or department store and internet store. It is the retail designer’s task to relate to and develop this experience through visual, spatial and communicative expression. Communication is the platform underlying and surrounding the spatial concept. A core issue for any business active in the retail sector must always be an empathic understanding of the culture of shoppingIndustrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin