Store Design Research Articles

How does the biophilic design of building projects impact consumers’ responses? – Case of retail stores

The study that biophilic store design (BSD) has a much higher perceived visual quality, increases the desire to patronize, increases willingness to spend retail stores shopping times is on the increase in the literature. The study of greenery in building environments has been vastly studied, however, the inclusion of greenery study in retail stores and its potentials to provide a strategic business advantage have been scarcely explored. This research work draws from the Attention Restoration Theory to unearth the impact of biophilic design attributes on consumer responses. Hence, this study asked: “How do attributes of biophilic design in retail stores impact consumers’ responses in retail stores”. A quantitative research method with an online questionnaire was employed; 177 participants were recruited. Multiple regression analysis was computed via SPSS and demonstrated that the four attributes (predictors) of biophilic design positively impact consumer responses. Findings for three attributes (biomorphic forms and patterns, material connection with nature, and complexity and order) were significant, while a visual connection with nature was not significant. These findings suggest that a biophilic design positively impact consumer responses; however, simply presenting or using natural elements is not sufficient to produce positive consumers' responses. Additionally, the t-test revealed that intent to purchase was significantly higher for a store low in biophilic attributes than the study hypotheses. The study's limitations and implications are discussed herein. This work contributes to the biophilic design paradigm of building projects by empirically demonstrating the restorative potential of lifestyle centers.

Nudging Technique In Retail

Changes in consumer behaviour, coupled with shifting purchasing habits, have led to a new setting, one in which the retailers are seeking novel means of keeping potential consumers inside their stores for the maximum duration possible. This prolonged time span contributes to the increased frequency of impulsive actions, thus resulting in greater customer spending. Impulsive buyers are the most crucial target audience for retailers, for they are purely driven by emotion, making decisions without prior preparation or information gathering. Through the grasp of psychological science, behavioural and cognitive functioning, it is possible to discern the factors that make specific retailers and their stores more appealing than others. The main purpose of this paper is to point out a relatively new concept and a technique, called “nudging”, and to showcase the methods of gaining new customers through its utilisation within the Croatian retail market. The nudging technique is not a forceful one, opting to employ imperceptible and subtle means, such as playing certain music, utilising carefully selected scents, colours and lighting within the store, which all serve to improve consumer perception and satisfaction. The retailer can stand out from the competition, precisely by using nudging, which intertwines sensory perception and other psychological factors, incorporating them in the overall store design. For this particular purpose, a survey was conducted among Croatian customers, which examined the presence of specific nudging techniques in retail, as well as their effects on the consumer behaviour. The research results concluded that the Croatian retailers do indeed utilise some nudging techniques which, although perceived by their customers are ultimately left unaware of the impact they have on their respective decision-making process and behaviour

Omotesando Caddesi’nde Bulunan Flagship Mağaza Tasarımlarının Kent Çalışmaları Bağlamında İncelenmesi

Since people started exchanging goods and services for money, they have been going shopping for a multitude of reasons. Shopping activity first started out with khans and bazaars, which were later replaced by shopping malls and street stores. Today, there are store types that people can choose according to their socio-economic status, lifestyles, and many variables. Luxury brands and their stores are also included in this category. There are some marketing strategies that luxury brands in this category employ in order to be successful brand, strengthen their brand image, and keep customer quality at the highest level. In this sense, flagship stores are among the most significant aspects of these strategies. These stores also contribute greatly to the urban scale with their architectural characteristics. Within the scope of this study, the example of Omotesando Street, one of the pioneers of the luxury retail industry was examined. In this study, visual data analysis, which is a type of qualitative research method was used. Omotesando is a street in Tokyo/Japan known for its luxury brand stores. The contribution of luxury store designs – namely flagship stores – to the urban scale were examined along with developments in the Japanese retail sector in the context of Omotesando Street. The study is unique in that it offers a perspective on the contribution of luxury brands’ flagship store designs to the urban scale.

The Impact of Structural Defects on Iodine Adsorption in UiO-66

Radioactive I2 (iodine) produced as a by-product of nuclear fission poses a risk to public health if released into the environment, and it is thus vital to develop materials that can capture I2 vapour. Materials designed for the capture and storage of I2 must have a high uptake capacity and be stable for long-term storage due the long half-life of 129I. UiO-66 is a highly stable and readily tuneable metal-organic framework (MOF) into which defect sites can be introduced. Here, a defective form of UiO-66 (UiO-66-FA) was synthesised and the presence of missing cluster moieties confirmed using confocal fluorescence microscopy and gas sorption measurements. The uptake of I2 vapour in UiO-66-FA was measured using thermal gravimetric analysis coupled mass spectrometry (TGA-MS) to be 2.25 g g−1, almost twice that (1.17 g g−1) of the pristine UiO-66. This study will inspire the design of new efficient I2 stores based upon MOFs incorporating structural defects.

The Correlation between Enclosure and Customer’s Response

There is a change in store design that is widely used by brands to sell their products. Brands that use temporary store is no longer integrating any boundaries to separate the store from the environment around them. The existence of boundaries relates to the spatial quality of the store, which ultimately has a relation to the response of customers. The new trend of retail shows that enclosure is no longer needed to accommodate shopping experience. Unfortunately, there is still limited literature that studies the enclosure of the store as a spatial quality in a store environment. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between the enclosure of a store environment and the customer’s shopping experience. This paper also extends the research related to the store’s spatial quality and its relation to the customers. A literature review was conducted to further investigate the relationship between enclosure as the store’s spatial quality, product engagement, and customer responses. This study features three store simulation videos with three different types of enclosure (4 walls, 2 walls, 0 wall) and two sets of questionnaires to study the customer’s behavior. We interviewed 163 respondents from the age range of 19-35 in this study. The results indicate that the store with no enclosure encourages the customer to stay longer compared to the store with an enclosure. These findings can later be used as consideration for retail designers to develop their stores.

Pressure relief of underground ammunition storage under missile accidental ignition

Safety of underground ammunition storage is an important issue, especially during the accidental ignition of missiles. This work investigates the pressure and temperature distribution of the multi-layer underground ammunition storage with a pressure relief duct during the accidental ignition process of the missile. A large-scale experiment was carried out using a multi-layered restricted space with a pressure relief duct to simulate the underground ammunition store and a solid rocket motor to simulate the accidental ignition of the missile. The results show that when the motor gas mass flow increased by 5.6 times, the maximum pressure of the ammunition storage increased by 5.87 times. At a certain motor flow rate, when the pressure relief exhaust area at the end of the relief duct was reduced by 1/2, the maximum pressure on the first layer did not change. But the rate of pressure relief was reduced and the time delayed for the pressure of ammunition store to drop to zero. In this experiment, when the motor ignition position was located in to the third layer ammunition chamber, the maximum pressure was reduced by 32.9% and also reduced the rate of change of pressure. In addition, for the experimental conditions, the theoretical analysis of the pressure relief of the ammunition storage is given by a simplified model. Based on the findings, some suggestions to the safety protection design of ammunition store are proposed.

The Influence of Opinion Leaders’ eWOM on Online Consumer Decisions: A Study on Social Influence

Opinion leaders and eWOM are becoming two of the most effective ways to launch a brand on social media by creating viral marketing. However, how much influence does an opinion leader’s eWOM (OL eWOM) have on consumer purchasing decisions? This research looks at the role of OL eWOM as well as the effect of its valence and product type on the decision to buy or not buy from a realistic experimental online store design. In total, 300 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of five scenarios in a 22 experimental arrangement. Results show that OL eWOM influences consumer online decisions when purchasing experience-type goods and the valence of eWOM is positive. However, if we compare the OL eWOM with a control group, then OL eWOM does not have a significant influence. This research provides novel empirical evidence for the limited influence of OL in modeling shopping behaviors in e-commerce contexts.

Platform Design and Innovation Incentives: Evidence from the Product Ratings System on Apple's App Store

A lack of platform-level competition among digital marketplaces can result in socially inefficient platform design and meaningful welfare losses, even independent of actively anticompetitive behavior. To illustrate the first-order effects platform design can have on competitive outcomes, I investigate how the longstanding design of the product ratings system on Apple’s App Store affected innovative behavior by platform participants. I leverage an exogenous change in this system to show that for nearly a decade, the design of the App Store’s product ratings system led to less frequent product updating by high-quality products. I provide suggestive evidence that this policy resulted in lost, as opposed to simply delayed, innovation.

CACDA: A knowledge graph for a context-aware cognitive design assistant

The design of complex engineered systems highly relies on a laborious zigzagging between computer-aided design (CAD) software and design rules prescribed by design manuals. Despite the emergence of knowledge management techniques (ontology, expert system, text mining, etc.), companies continue to store design rules in large and unstructured documents. To facilitate the integration of design rules and CAD software, we propose a knowledge graph that structures a large set of design rules in a computable format. The knowledge graph organises entities of design rules (nodes), relationships among design rules (edges), as well as contextual information. The categorisation of entities and relationships in four sub-contexts: semantic, social, engineering, and IT – facilitates the development of the data model, especially the definition of the “design context” concept. The knowledge graph paves the way to a context-aware cognitive design assistant. Indeed, connected to or embedded in a CAD software, a context-aware cognitive design assistant will capture the design context in near real time and run reasoning operations on the knowledge graph to extend traditional CAD capabilities, such as the recommendation of design rules, the verification of design solutions, or the automation of design routines. Our validation experiment shows that the current version of the context-aware cognitive design assistant is more efficient than the traditional document-based design. On average, participants using an unstructured design rules document have a precision of 0.36 whereas participants using our demonstrator obtain a 0.61 precision score. Finally, designers supported by the design assistant spend more time designing than searching for applicable design rules compared to the traditional design approach.

Implementing Virtual Reality Headsets in Design Education

While Virtual Reality (VR) is now widely used as a final design presentation tool, little research focuses on the role of VR during design development processes in design education. However, properly positioned and pedagogically researched VR holds great potential for helping students make better design decisions to support end-users with diverse needs. This research seeks to connect the value of VR as not only a presentation medium but also as a “perspective taking” tool to help students develop better design solutions. Undergraduate Interior Design students (n=15) were recruited to experience their already completed studio projects of a retail store design as a VR character in a virtual wheelchair. Each participant was asked to assess the effectiveness of their design solution for wheelchair users before and after the intervention. The interactions students had during their VR sessions were recorded and content analyzed for emerging themes. Although the sample size was small to achieve statistical power, qualitative findings revealed numerous perceptual shifts as students identified problems for wheelchair users in their design solutions.

Retail facility layout considering shopper path

The physical design of a retail store is known to influence the attitude and behavior of shoppers, in turn affecting the store’s performance. While literature in retail design has alluded to the impact of changes in department placements on impulse revenue, it has not accounted for the resulting changes in shopper path. Changes in shopper path can alter a department’s visibility to shoppers passing by, which could change a department’s impulse revenue. To address this gap, we propose a model for the retail facility layout problem considering shopper path (RFLP-SP) that optimally places departments in the store in order to maximize a retailer’s expected per shopper impulse revenue. Since estimating shopper paths is difficult to express in closed analytical form, we propose a Simulated Annealing based heuristic to generate up to k alternate shortest paths that a shopper may take for a given planned purchase list. This is then embedded in a Particle Swarm Optimization based solution approach to solve the overall RFLP-SP model. Our results suggest up to 13.71% increase in impulse revenue for a deeper store over a square-shaped store, and up to 9.65% increase in one side-door store over other door combinations. Further, the derived solutions are sensitive to shopper basket size, shape of the store, number and location of doors, and adjacency requirement of the departments. We also illustrate the use of our proposed approach on an existing layout of a leading US retailer’s store.

Sense hardness: Effect of haptic perception on consumer attitudes towards brand extension

AbstractEstablished brands endeavor to extend their products into new categories to grab market share and benefit from the positive spillover effect. The “fit” between extension products and their parent brands is a critical challenge companies face when launching a new product in a new product category, which is very different from the category served by the parent brand. A potential clue influencing consumers' perceived fit and attitudes towards extension products is the nondiagnostic haptic cues in touch environments. Thus, this study predicts that soft perception elicits more favorable attitudes towards extension product through attitude certainty and perceived fit than hard haptic perception. It develops a conceptual framework to anticipate that not all extension product judgements are equally affected by nondiagnostic haptic cues. Consumers' attitudes are less affected by nondiagnostic haptic cues when the extension product is from a close brand extension. The study examined the conceptual framework of four studies. Results of this work have many implications for package and offline stores design while contributing to the research in brand extension, cognition, and embodiment.

Intelligent Design for Automotive Interior Trim Structures Based on Knowledge Rule-based Reasoning

An intelligent design method is presented for automotive interior trim structures based on rule-based reasoning. Design experience knowledge and design process are expressed as production rules, in which geometry model operations are integrated. Rule-based reasoning and model-associated operating are unified in one process. By rule-based reasoning, the intelligent design of interior trim structures is achieved. The method is designed as a three-layer architecture, including the interactive layer, the reasoning and executing layer and the knowledge library layer. The design of interactive dialog is implemented by NX/Open Block UI tool. The knowledge library, including the rule knowledge library and parameter knowledge library, is designed to store design knowledge rules and experience parameters. Each rule is designed in a class form. The data member is the condition of the production rule, and the member function performs operations described by the result of the production rule. The reasoning and executing module is designed through rule-based reasoning, which matches the design rules from the knowledge library according to known facts, calls model operations and updates facts. Based on NX platform, the intelligent design system is implemented by using NX/Open and C++ codes. Finally, the intelligence and efficiency of this method is verified.

Visual Merchandising Elements: Drivers Of Retail Strategies?

Visual merchandising has increasingly become important in retailing especially with more and more customers opting to go online. This study focused on the consumer in order to obtain a better understanding of the visual merchandising elements that impact on visual merchandising in the South African apparel retail industry. The primary research objective was to identify visual merchandising elements from a retailers and consumers perspective in order to drive more focused retail strategies in store design and planning in the apparel market. This research study followed a mixed-methods approach. The value of the research study lies in its contribution to the development of strategic visual merchandising elements that can be used in the retail strategies of apparel retailers. Incorporating visual merchandising elements can improve visual merchandising proficiency and thus have greater impact on store design and layout, as well as when designing and planning new stores.

Customizable Scale-Out Key-Value Stores

Enterprise KV stores are often not well suited for HPC applications, and thus cumbersome end-to-end KV design customization is required to meet the needs of modern HPC applications. To this end, in this article we present bespoKV, an adaptive, extensible, and scale-out KV store framework. bespoKV decouples the KV store design into the control plane for distributed management and the data plane for local data store. For the control plane, bespoKVprovides pre-built modules, called controlets, supporting common distributed functionalities (e.g., replication, consistency, and topology) and their various combinations. This decoupling allows bespoKV to take a user-provided single-server KV store, called a datalet, and transparently enables a scalable and fault-tolerant distributed KV store service. The resulting distributed stores are also adaptive to consistency or topology requirement changes and can be easily extended for new types of services. Such specializations enable innovative uses of KV stores in HPC applications, especially for emerging applications that utilize KV-friendly workloads. We evaluate bespoKV in a local testbed as well as in a public cloud settings. Experiments show that bespoKV-enabled distributed KV stores scale horizontally to a large number of nodes, and performs comparably and sometimes 1.2× to 2.6× better than the state-of-the-art systems.

The Application of Artificial Intelligence and VR Technology in Clothing Store Display Design

For VR technology, the core goal is to create a sense of reality, so that users can not distinguish between the real world and virtual environment. The purpose of this paper is to study the application of artificial intelligence and VR technology in the display design of clothing stores. First of all, there are four ways of clothing display and display: filling display, eye-catching display, emphasizing display and close display. Secondly, the system structure of VR technology is divided into hardware equipment structure and key technical support. The design of artificial intelligence module and control instruction encryption are studied. Finally, the simulation of the display design environment of the clothing store by the follow-up system under the unfamiliar environment is carried out. The experimental results show that the delay time of 4G environment is shorter than that of WiFi environment. In the same network environment, generally speaking, the worse the quality of image compression, the shorter the delay time. As the quality of the compressed image becomes poor, the corresponding amount of data is also small, and the delay is also short. But the worse the quality of the compressed image is, the more computing resources are consumed, which will cause the delay of the device itself, and when the quality of the compressed image is 40, the delay time is not shorter than 60. The delay times of each test are only 1 to 2 times, and the actual delay time is only 2 seconds, which shows that the robot is more sensitive to the instructions.

Customer Value Types Predicting Consumer Behavior at Dutch Grocery Retailers.

The purpose of this paper is to profile three grocery retail formats (non-discounter, soft discounter, and hard discounter) in the Netherlands using Holbrook’s value types. These value types are linked to three consumer behavior outcomes, i.e., Satisfaction, Repurchase intention, and Word-of-Mouth. The impact of the retail formats is evaluated on the importance and performance of the value types, using a questionnaire for each of the retail formats. The relationship between the value types and outcomes is tested with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Aesthetics, Altruistic value, and Efficiency are positively linked to Satisfaction. In addition, Efficiency is the key driver for Repurchase intention and has a positive impact on Word-of-Mouth. A positive Word-of-Mouth is predicted by Social value and Service excellence. The three examined retail formats show a difference in Holbrook’s value types. Overall, the results of the non- and soft discounters differ from the hard discounters. Remarkably, and contrary to previous studies, the soft discounter’s scores are the highest meaning that consumers are most critical for this retail format. It seems that consumers expect the best of both worlds at soft discounters: low prices, interesting bargains, easy access, but also appealing store design, and excellent service.

The Fashion City and the Suburb: How Bentalls of Kingston Upon Thames Helped Rebuild Cultures of Fashionable Consumption in London after the Second World War

The Second World War disrupted the usual networks and geographies of London fashion, changing the way fashion was made and sold in the city. Taking Bentalls department store in Kingston Upon Thames as a case study, this article explores how this disruption created new opportunities for suburban shops to challenge the West End’s supremacy as they key site for London fashion retail in the immediate postwar era. It explores how Bentalls pioneered innovative retail methodologies that satisfied consumers’ desire for individuality and plenty at a time of austerity, and played an important role in developing retail methodologies for selling to the newly emerging teenage consumer. This article argues that Bentalls, through its innovative publicity, store design and display, contributed to rebuilding London’s postwar fashion cultures in a way that demonstrates the need to incorporate London’s suburbs into future histories of the fashion city.

Designing Online Grocery Stores to Support Healthy Eating for Weight Loss

Abstract Objectives To begin development of online grocery store design features that could support healthful food purchasing by shoppers who are trying to lose weight, using a Value Proposition Design approach to product development. Methods One-on-one interviews were conducted with adults who reported they were trying to lose weight (n = 25) to gain insight into their shopping needs and perceptions. Interview results were used to identify four potential online grocery shopping features that could support healthful food purchase decisions. Prototypes were developed for each feature, and one-on-one interviews were conducted with a different sample of adults who reported trying to lose weight (n = 25) to gather feedback on the prototypes. Results Based on customer needs identified through insight interview, the following four potential online grocery store features were devised and prototyped by the research team: 1) Nutritional quality rating of shopping cart items purchased, with suggestions for improvement provided; 2) Menu planning support tool to provide menu and recipe suggestions tailored to individual preferences; 3) An interactive virtual grocery aisle designed as a fun way to discover healthy products and meal ideas; and 4) A healthy shopping preference option to opt into a shopping experience that prioritizes the display and advertising of foods that align with the shopper's health and nutrition goals. Results from feedback interviews indicated that the menu planning support tool and the healthy shopping preference option were both highly positively rated and believed to be effective in helping support healthy food choices by most participants. Conclusions Further development and evaluation work is warranted for the online grocery store features found to be most highly rated. This study illustrates application of a design thinking approach to developing nutrition promotion related products/programs. Funding Sources University of Minnesota JB Hawley Faculty Research Award.

HOW GLOBAL BRANDS MANAGE THE LOCALISATION OF SPATIAL EXPERIENCES – THE CASES OF STARBUCKS AND IKEA

AbstractThis study explores how two global brands (Starbucks and IKEA) design spatial experiences that are localised for diverse cultural contexts. Through a series of interviews with store designers, design and marketing managers, and brand experts from both companies, we identify two different ways a brand and design team can be organized and how each influences the process of the localisation of spatial experiences. Our findings highlight issues related to a team's structure, the use of different design processes and how these influence the building of strong, locally relevant spatial experiences.