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The predominant role played by large-scale retailers in consumer goods markets has led to substantial changes in the promotion and advertising flows of companies operating in this sector. Manufacturing companies are in fact investing an increasingly larger share of their resources in communication strategies managed by retailers by way of in-store communications, taking advantage of both traditional and digital media. As a result, besides being a place of purchase, the point of sale has become an environment where customer relationships are being built and developed over time. In this book chapter, we take a closer look at current in-store communications via cutting-edge digital media solutions designed to boost customer experience and brand loyalty. To gain a better understanding of these new forms of communication, we have also conducted a qualitative case study on “The Supermarket of the Future,” a new retail format recently launched by Coop Italia in Milan, using data from different sources, including internal and external document reviews and in-store observations. Overall, this study outlines an innovative customer relationship format consistent with an omni-channel approach and informative in-store communications integrating traditional and new digital media.

Retailers increasingly experiment with a wide variety of store elements; this chapter focuses on in-store marketing tactics and reports the results of 12 in-store experiments conducted in cooperation with different retail chains. Experiments 1–3 address in-store signage (digital, floor) and reveal that digital screens and signage can draw customers toward merchandise and deeper into shopping aisles. Experiments 4–6 explore the impact of the organization of a display (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, waterfall) and generally demonstrate the superiority of vertical organizations of merchandise. In Experiments 7–9, results pertaining to the location of a product in a store highlight the importance of placing merchandise at eye level. With Experiments 10 and 11, the authors reinforce the importance of retail atmospherics (scent, lighting). Finally, Experiment 12 explores product placement and other factors that can enhance the effectiveness of in-store merchandise demonstrations.

Shopper marketing describes the planning and execution of all marketing activities that influence a shopper along – and beyond – the path-to-purchase, from shopping trigger to purchase, consumption, repurchase, and recommendation stages. Shopper marketing practices at manufacturers and retailers are growing at a tremendous pace and a rising portion of marketing budgets are now devoted to shopper marketing. The first phase of shopper marketing research and practice, Shopper Marketing 1.0, addressed interesting issues, primarily relating to in-store marketing. In the next phase, Shopper Marketing 2.0, will significantly extend to out-of-store marketing, including online and mobile marketing, resulting in an integrated practice. In this new environment, to formulate and execute effective shopper marketing strategies, managers need to better understand the complete picture of how online, offline, mobile and in-store marketing influence shoppers in the path-to-purchase-and-beyond cycle. In this chapter, we present the evolution of shopper marketing, summarize key learnings, outline important issues, and discuss the opportunities and challenges of Shopper Marketing 2.0.

Retail marketing is in the midst of an evolution. The paradigm is shifting from a product-centric to a consumer-centric focus, with a particular emphasis on understanding how consumers transition from harboring an interest in a product to actually purchasing that product. In response, shopper marketing, and in-store marketing (ISM) in particular, have emerged as important mechanisms to influence shopper behavior in brick & mortar and online retail environments. The academic literature is replete with work on what factors of ISM influence shopper behavior. In this chapter, we categorize prominent streams of findings on ISM into firm, customer, competitor and product characteristics of ISM and examine how the notion of a “store” is evolving from bricks to clicks – namely from physical formats to online shopping experiences. Insights from this chapter will help retailers and store managers identify what their customers respond to within a physical store, how technology is changing the way they can capture information on customers, and how shopper behavior is evolving in response to brick & mortar and online retail environments.

In an omnichannel environment, customers switch channels from product discovery to eventual purchase decision strategically. Hence, the biggest challenge for retailers nowadays is how to operate an effective omnichannel strategy. To improve inventory operational efficiency, this chapter investigates the influences of price setting and customers’ return probability on inventory forecasting. Subsequently, we explore how retailers participate in providing appropriate information delivery and product fulfillment. Specifically, a stylized newsvendor model, which incorporates customers’ showrooming behavior, is developed to address retailers’ inventory problem. Furthermore, we compare the benefits of buy-online-and-pick-up-in-store (BOPS) and showroom strategy which originates offline but is completed online. Three main findings are obtained as follows: (1)online and offline inventory order quantities augment with the ascending of pricing offline and online, respectively. Meanwhile, the inventory decisions increase when customers’ return probability declines; (2) the implementation of showroom helps retailers expand their pure online market coverage than BOPS, while it reduces the total inventory quantity if the proposition of unit online inventory cost accounting for product price exceeds physical store; and (3) showroom strategy is more profitable than BOPS option as long as unit online inventory cost is small enough. In addition, we find this boundary where showroom increases total profit expands with the attenuating of return probability.

Manufacturers and retailers spend millions of dollars every year on in-store communications. The effectiveness of these dollars depends on whether shoppers notice, pay attention to, and engage with these communications, something that is best determined from eye-tracking data. In this chapter, we utilize mobile eye-tracking data from tens of in-store marketing research studies conducted with hundreds of shoppers to develop six lessons with important implications for effective signage, shelf configuration, and package design. The first three lessons highlight the challenge of being noticed and engaged with in the store, given the narrow spatial window above and below eye level in which consumers look, the very short amount of time they devote to reading a sign or label even when they notice it, and the low probability that they engage with a communication especially if it is not immediately actionable. The last three lessons provide guidance on how marketers can design packages and labels that are more likely to be noticed, read, and included in the shopper’s consideration set, across different product categories.

Marketplaces are changing, and customers are demanding improved experiences where they want, how they want, and when they want. The omnichannel concept is perceived as an evolution of multichannel retailing, which implies a blurring division between the physical and online stores. In the omnichannel environment, customers move freely among physical and online stores expecting seamless shopping experiences between channels. Among different generational consumer groups, Gen Z deserves marketers’ particular attention, which is the new rising segment for omnichannel experiences. The purpose of this chapter is first to verify the essence of generational differences in consumer’s omnichannel buying behavior by giving a special focus on the Gen Z segment. Secondly, this chapter discusses how retailers should integrate their online and offline store channels to provide the best retail brand experience to these distinctive Gen Z consumers.

We review the implications of the mobile technology for different stages of the consumer path to purchase including awareness, search, evaluation, store visit, and product choice. Real-time and location-specific access to information and products are identified as distinguishing characteristics of mobile devices. While the literature on digital marketing is well developed, knowledge of the effects on the consumer path to purchase in the presence of dynamic and location-specific information is still scarce. Path to purchase models need to recognize the central and powerful role of user-generated content. Better management of marketing resources would require models that connect investments in mobile marketing to sales, and also model the synergies among different digital and offline media. We conclude with a framework that connects mobile media impressions to product choice, in the presence of other marketing media, and consumer and firm feedback loops.

Online retailing is continuing to grow at a time with many fashion brands are closing retail stores. Social media is now an essential component within the purchase journey of a fashion consumer. As social media networks continue to develop transactional capabilities, this has giving rise to the expansion of social shopping. Fashion brands need to consider how best to optimise social shopping opportunities as an extension of the retail shopping experience. Reviewing developments within retailing, a conceptual model of social shopping is proposed, which places mobile technologies as central to the social shopping experience both on social media and in store.