What Does the Future of Retail Lighting Look Like?

What Does the Future of Retail Lighting Look Like?

As consumer behavior continues to evolve and shift toward the digital, the effects on brick-and-mortar stores become clear. But instead of resigning to these changes and any negative impact on your store, there are ways retail store owners can work with these changes to attract consumers--and that includes store lighting.

Today, an estimated 60% of all shopping is influenced by digital experiences, whether it’s shopping online or using an AI assistant or other online service. Despite this, it’s important to remember that certain aspects of shopping in a store will never be able to be recreated digitally. The new face of retail is about blending the digital and the physical. Embracing these new technologies adds to consumers’ experiences keeps them shopping in-store rather than driving sales online. Your store’s experience should strike a balance between the digital and the physical, helping entice more modern-minded consumers without intimidating older or more traditional consumers.

As consumer behavior has shifted, so has a shift in how retail spaces market themselves to consumers and the importance of offering differentiated experiences to shoppers. An increased emphasis on retail spaces as community spaces has emerged, and lighting plays a huge role in making those spaces look interesting and inviting. Draw customers in with attractive lighting and signage that establishes your brand identity, and keep your lighting design fresh to keep customers coming back. Changing lighting to suit the different seasons or accent new displays or highlight products keeps the shopper’s experience new and exciting.

As previously mentioned on this blog, using LED lighting with indoor positioning heightens the shopper’s experience by connecting to a smartphone app. This lighting can track the shopper’s position in the store and be used to help them shop more efficiently and enhance their experience by drawing their attention to sales or products they may be interested in. This data can be invaluable to better understanding your customers’ in-store habits and making sure your store is working to suit their needs and behaviors by stocking the products they’re looking for, making sure your lighting guides their journey through the store and more.

Regardless of the technologies currently in place, technology that augments how we shop isn’t going away any time soon, and new tools and services will continue to come and go. It’s important that your store--including your lighting design--embraces these changes to continue to add value for your customers.

http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/inspiration/smart-retail/retail-trends/the-future-of-retail#

https://www.indiaretailing.com/2017/01/25/retail/lighting-up-the-future-the-making-of-killer-experiential-retail/