Window display is a useful tool in visual merchandising and an important method for fashion marketing. Designers spend time thinking, conceptualising, and selecting elements to be shown in the brand's store window display; and nowadays big department stores and global fashion brands hire experienced designers and design teams to create visually attractive stores interiors and window displays. The two main purposes, usually, for displaying products in windows are grabbing attentions as a marketing tool, and showing what the brand offers for the consumer. Luxury fashion brands and luxurious department stores spend time and big amounts of money from the brands’ budgets to arrange visually attractive window displays, international fashion retail brands sometimes does that too. In this study we will look at several design elements in some luxurious fashion brands and retail fashion windows for four brands in UK and Saudi Arabia. Case studies and observations are used as the main research method, and sampling is conducted in three cities for the brands’ 2017S/S seasons, London, Leeds in UK and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia; collecting photographs of each window display is arranged for each brand. Firstly, we will be analysing each window by its own using a guiding summary table, and a focused study into colour will be conducted with comparative colour analysis that will be carried out between the four chosen luxury and retail brands in both countries

Attiah, Douha

Lim, Hye-Won

Birmingham City University Open Access Repository

Colour application comparison between luxurious and retail brand’s window displays

Attiah, D

Lim, H-W

White Rose Research Online

This is a repository copy of Colour application comparison between luxurious and retail brand’s window displays.White Rose Research Online URL for this paper:http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/171083/Version: Accepted VersionConference or Workshop Item:Attiah, D and Lim, H-W orcid.org/0000-0001-6864-9357 (2017) Colour application comparison between luxurious and retail brand’s window displays. In: 13th International Colour Association Congress (AIC 2017), 16-20 Oct 2017, Jeju, Korea. This item is protected by copyright, all rights reserved. This is an author produced version of a conference presentation published in the Proceedings of the 13th AIC Congress.eprints@whiterose.ac.ukhttps://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017  Colour application comparison between luxurious and retail brand’s window displays   Douha Attiah*, Hye-Won Lim**,  *Department of Housing, Interior Design and Furniture, Faculty of Home Economics, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA.  **Department of Fashion Design, Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK  *Corresponding author: dattiah@kau.edu.sa  Window display is a useful tool in visual merchandising and an important method for fashion marketing. Designers spend time thinking, conceptualising, and selecting elements to be shown in the brand's store window display; and nowadays big department stores and global fashion brands hire experienced designers and design teams to create visually attractive stores interiors and window displays. The two main purposes, usually, for displaying products in windows are grabbing attentions as a marketing tool, and showing what the brand offers for the consumer. Luxury fashion brands and luxurious department stores spend time and big amounts of money from the brands’ budgets to arrange visually attractive window displays, international fashion retail brands sometimes does that too. In this study we will look at several design elements in some luxurious fashion brands and retail fashion windows for four brands in UK and Saudi Arabia. Case studies and observations are used as the main research method, and sampling is conducted in three cities for the brands’ 2017S/S seasons, London, Leeds in UK and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia; collecting photographs of each window display is arranged for each brand. Firstly, we will be analysing each window by its own using a guiding summary table, and a focused study into colour will be conducted with comparative colour analysis that will be carried out between the four chosen luxury and retail brands in both countries.   Keywords: fashion window display, interior design, colour, luxurious brands, retail  INTRODUCTION Window display plays a major part in the selling strategies; it does not only include the simple display of goods, nowadays it is a form of art, also having the purpose of sustaining the brand image. Sen, Block, and Chandran (2002) suggests that window displays can function as both advertising and sales promotion which underlines their uniqueness as a marketing communication tool (Baker et al, 2015). The role of the displays at the end rotates around convincing customers entering the store and triggering the consumer’s purchasing act (BRĂTUCU and OPRI, 2013). Colour is an important element to study for window designers, for this purpose we are looking at colour by analysing four brands’ windows in two countries, and to see if there is any colour-cultural differences for the same brand window design across cities.   METHODS  Case study is aimed to comprehend the entirety of the case to provide a specific written description of the case as an independent object (Blaxter et al., 2006). The main source of data in for this study is the researcher’s field studies and capturing photos, some were captured by a professional camera, and some by a smart phone depending on the comfort and rules of the shops.    Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017   Store codes are as follows: L1 codes Louis Vuitton, L2 Alexander McQueen, R1 Monsoon, and R2 for Topshop. JED is used to codify Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and UK symbolises the United Kingdom (Leeds and London).  Table 1.  Collected pictures    JED  UK L1 JED UK  JED  UK L2 JED UK  JED  UK R1 JED UK   JED  UK R2 JED UK  Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017  Table 2.  Summary analysis    code Architecture  Window style Items/props Colour/s Overall design L1 JED Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity  L1 UK Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity L2 JED Following the mall with extra cladding materials for a more luxurious appearance  Closed back Open back Mannequins Dresses & shoes Product oriented Gold colour added to the shop front  Simple  L2 UK Following the mall  Open back  Mannequins Dresses  Product oriented  Simple  R1 JED Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity  R1 UK Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity R2 JED Following the mall with extra cladding materials for a more luxurious appearance  Closed back Open back Mannequins Dresses & shoes Product oriented Gold colour added to the shop front  Simple  R2 UK Following the mall  Open back  Mannequins Dresses  Product oriented  Simple   Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017  Louis Vuitton as a luxury brand focused in this season on displaying the new packaging items to emphasise on the new identity using the orange and blue colours. In both Saudi Arabia and UK they seemed to be similar in the goods and identity displayed. L2 McQueen showed a more simple approach by displaying some goods (dresses and shoes) and the focus again was the brand by adding Gold colour to the shop front in Jeddah (L2 JED).  On the other hand, the colours for the chosen retail brands’ windows showed a difference in the marketing methods than the included luxury brands. Retails brands may not have similar budgets dedicated to window designs, thus the main focus is to sell the mass production, this is done through displaying most desired (by consumers) goods and showing if the store has sale or discounts through big colourful signs, such as neon yellow and neon pink signs showed in Figure1.   FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Luxury brands may focus on the brand identity and how to make it stand out, and this can apply to the brands’ windows and the colours used, whereas retail shops’ window displays focus on displaying the items and products, and tend to use affordable and lower budget ideas and designs. Sometimes there might be many products displayed to attract more consumers.  Luxurious brands may add the brand identity colours to the main design and some architectural elements of the store front too as an element of luxury, this could be because these brands have higher budgets than other retails and everyday-fashion brands.  CONCLUSIONS This study led us to conduct more in-depth research about colour for fashion brands as in window displays and visual merchandising applications. The four brands (8 stores in total) gave the researchers an idea about the use of colour in luxury and retail window displays in the fashion industry. Colour is one major element for all designs, and can be used effectively for better marketing purposes in all businesses. We can conclude at this stage that luxury brands know that they have their customers, and do not necessarily want to attract more by adding neon colour signs or big scale ones, these luxury brands may majorly focus on their identity instead. On the contrary, retail brands mass produce goods and may want to always attract more customers by using effective windows and store fronts, not only by showing the brand identity (as for luxurious ones), but by promoting more items and sale signs when applicable.   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The researchers would like to thank all who helped us capture the windows and shop fronts in both countries: Malika Alghaleb, Noha Gazzaz, and Ghaidaa Bawazeer.   REFERENCES  M. OPRIŞ (CĂS. STĂNILĂ) and G. BRĂTUCU (2013) VISUAL MERCHANDISING WINDOW DISPLAY BRĂTUCU Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov Series V: Economic Sciences Vol. 6 (55) No. 2   Karinna Nobbs, Kar Mun Foong & Jonathan Baker (2015) An exploration of fashion visual merchandising and its role as a brand positioning device, Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 6:1, 4-19, DOI: 10.1080/20932685.2014.971491  Blaxter, L., Hughes, C. and Tight, M. (2006) How to research. 3rd edn. Maidenhead: Open University Press.  

BCU Open Access

Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017  Colour application comparison between luxurious and retail brand’s window displays   Douha Attiah*, Hye-Won Lim**,  *Department of Housing, Interior Design and Furniture, Faculty of Home Economics, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA.  **Department of Fashion Design, Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK  *Corresponding author: dattiah@kau.edu.sa  Window display is a useful tool in visual merchandising and an important method for fashion marketing. Designers spend time thinking, conceptualising, and selecting elements to be shown in the brand's store window display; and nowadays big department stores and global fashion brands hire experienced designers and design teams to create visually attractive stores interiors and window displays. The two main purposes, usually, for displaying products in windows are grabbing attentions as a marketing tool, and showing what the brand offers for the consumer. Luxury fashion brands and luxurious department stores spend time and big amounts of money from the brands’ budgets to arrange visually attractive window displays, international fashion retail brands sometimes does that too. In this study we will look at several design elements in some luxurious fashion brands and retail fashion windows for four brands in UK and Saudi Arabia. Case studies and observations are used as the main research method, and sampling is conducted in three cities for the brands’ 2017S/S seasons, London, Leeds in UK and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia; collecting photographs of each window display is arranged for each brand. Firstly, we will be analysing each window by its own using a guiding summary table, and a focused study into colour will be conducted with comparative colour analysis that will be carried out between the four chosen luxury and retail brands in both countries.   Keywords: fashion window display, interior design, colour, luxurious brands, retail  INTRODUCTION Window display plays a major part in the selling strategies; it does not only include the simple display of goods, nowadays it is a form of art, also having the purpose of sustaining the brand image. Sen, Block, and Chandran (2002) suggests that window displays can function as both advertising and sales promotion which underlines their uniqueness as a marketing communication tool (Baker et al, 2015). The role of the displays at the end rotates around convincing customers entering the store and triggering the consumer’s purchasing act (BRĂTUCU and OPRI, 2013). Colour is an important element to study for window designers, for this purpose we are looking at colour by analysing four brands’ windows in two countries, and to see if there is any colour-cultural differences for the same brand window design across cities.   METHODS  Case study is aimed to comprehend the entirety of the case to provide a specific written description of the case as an independent object (Blaxter et al., 2006). The main source of data in for this study is the researcher’s field studies and capturing photos, some were captured by a professional camera, and some by a smart phone depending on the comfort and rules of the shops.    Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017   Store codes are as follows: L1 codes Louis Vuitton, L2 Alexander McQueen, R1 Monsoon, and R2 for Topshop. JED is used to codify Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and UK symbolises the United Kingdom (Leeds and London).  Table 1.  Collected pictures    JED  UK L1 JED UK  JED  UK L2 JED UK  JED  UK R1 JED UK   JED  UK R2 JED UK  Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017  Table 2.  Summary analysis    code Architecture  Window style Items/props Colour/s Overall design L1 JED Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity  L1 UK Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity L2 JED Following the mall with extra cladding materials for a more luxurious appearance  Closed back Open back Mannequins Dresses & shoes Product oriented Gold colour added to the shop front  Simple  L2 UK Following the mall  Open back  Mannequins Dresses  Product oriented  Simple  R1 JED Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity  R1 UK Following the mall with a focus on brand identity Closed back semi open New packaging items-identity Brand’s leather & new goods Brand oriented: Colours of the new packaging Focusing on new identity R2 JED Following the mall with extra cladding materials for a more luxurious appearance  Closed back Open back Mannequins Dresses & shoes Product oriented Gold colour added to the shop front  Simple  R2 UK Following the mall  Open back  Mannequins Dresses  Product oriented  Simple   Attiah, D. & Lim, H-W.             INVESTIGATING COLOUR IN INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION  Proceedings of 13th AIC Congress 2017  Louis Vuitton as a luxury brand focused in this season on displaying the new packaging items to emphasise on the new identity using the orange and blue colours. In both Saudi Arabia and UK they seemed to be similar in the goods and identity displayed. L2 McQueen showed a more simple approach by displaying some goods (dresses and shoes) and the focus again was the brand by adding Gold colour to the shop front in Jeddah (L2 JED).  On the other hand, the colours for the chosen retail brands’ windows showed a difference in the marketing methods than the included luxury brands. Retails brands may not have similar budgets dedicated to window designs, thus the main focus is to sell the mass production, this is done through displaying most desired (by consumers) goods and showing if the store has sale or discounts through big colourful signs, such as neon yellow and neon pink signs showed in Figure1.   FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Luxury brands may focus on the brand identity and how to make it stand out, and this can apply to the brands’ windows and the colours used, whereas retail shops’ window displays focus on displaying the items and products, and tend to use affordable and lower budget ideas and designs. Sometimes there might be many products displayed to attract more consumers.  Luxurious brands may add the brand identity colours to the main design and some architectural elements of the store front too as an element of luxury, this could be because these brands have higher budgets than other retails and everyday-fashion brands.  CONCLUSIONS This study led us to conduct more in-depth research about colour for fashion brands as in window displays and visual merchandising applications. The four brands (8 stores in total) gave the researchers an idea about the use of colour in luxury and retail window displays in the fashion industry. Colour is one major element for all designs, and can be used effectively for better marketing purposes in all businesses. We can conclude at this stage that luxury brands know that they have their customers, and do not necessarily want to attract more by adding neon colour signs or big scale ones, these luxury brands may majorly focus on their identity instead. On the contrary, retail brands mass produce goods and may want to always attract more customers by using effective windows and store fronts, not only by showing the brand identity (as for luxurious ones), but by promoting more items and sale signs when applicable.   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The researchers would like to thank all who helped us capture the windows and shop fronts in both countries: Malika Alghaleb, Noha Gazzaz, and Ghaidaa Bawazeer.   REFERENCES  M. OPRIŞ (CĂS. STĂNILĂ) and G. BRĂTUCU (2013) VISUAL MERCHANDISING WINDOW DISPLAY BRĂTUCU Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov Series V: Economic Sciences Vol. 6 (55) No. 2   Karinna Nobbs, Kar Mun Foong & Jonathan Baker (2015) An exploration of fashion visual merchandising and its role as a brand positioning device, Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 6:1, 4-19, DOI: 10.1080/20932685.2014.971491  Blaxter, L., Hughes, C. and Tight, M. (2006) How to research. 3rd edn. Maidenhead: Open University Press.  

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Colour application comparison between luxurious and retail brand’s window displays

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