Both goods or services can be displayed to highlight their features and benefits. The purpose of such visual merchandising is to attract, engage, and motivate the customer towards making a purchase.
Visual merchandising commonly occurs in retail spaces such as retail stores and trade shows.
Principles
The purpose of visual merchandising is to:
Make it easier for the customer to locate the desired category and merchandise.
Make it easier for the customer to self-select.
Make it possible for the shopper to co-ordinate and accessorise.
Recommend, highlight and demonstrate particular products at strategic locations.
Educate the customer about the product in an effective & creative way.
Make proper arrangements in such a way to increase the sale of unsought goods.
Techniques
Visual merchandising builds upon or augments the retail design of a store. It is one of the final stages in setting out a store in a way customers find attractive and appealing.
Many elements can be used by visual merchandisers in creating displays including color, lighting, space, product information, sensory inputs (such as smell, touch, and sound), as well as technologies such as digital displays and interactive installations.
Tools
A planogram allows visual merchandisers to plan the arrangement of merchandise by style, type, size, price or some other category. It also enables a chain of stores to have the same merchandise displayed in a coherent and similar manner across the chain.
SHOPPING MOTIVATIONS
According to Westbrook and Black (1985) one of the most appropriate bases on which to develop a shopper typology is the underlying shopping motivations. Therefore, a brief review of studies investigating shopping motivations is presented. One of the first researchers to investigate shopping motivations was Tauber (1972). Using