If you work in fashion, you probably already know that products don’t sell themselves. In other words, the beauty of a garment or the quality of its material doesn’t guarantee a sale. On the contrary, there’s a whole range of factors that end up having a bigger impact on sales, such as brand strength, the groups the brand is associated with, its marketing campaigns and, let’s not forget, POS activations.
With that in mind, the way you present your product is decisive for sales. Well-executed visual merchandising, for example, can showcase certain pieces in a display, driving up demand for them. Likewise, one-on-one service helps customers find more items they’re interested in and, as a result, take more clothes home.
In today’s post, we explain why innovation in POS activations has such an impact on sales, and we share some activation trends to inspire you. Check it out!
The importance of innovative POS activations
Using mannequins to display signature pieces from the collection and organizing clothing by section, for example, are well-established techniques with proven effectiveness.
However, the more these techniques are replicated, the less effective they become. Customers end up getting used to them, or even developing a certain resistance when they come across the same POS activations in every store. It’s essential, then, for professionals in this field to stay on top of industry trends in order to refresh their processes.
This is where digital technologies have proven to be powerful allies. When used creatively, they bring a freshness to the process that makes the experience more enjoyable and memorable, winning customers over.
To illustrate this idea, we’ve rounded up four POS activation trends to inspire you to innovate in your business.
4 trends to inspire you
Some of the POS activation trends below have been used by more than one brand, and all of them can be applied in both mall stores and street-front stores. Take a look!
1. Virtual fitting room
The virtual fitting room — already up and running in Ralph Lauren and Rebecca Minkoff stores in New York — combines the advantages of online and in-store shopping, giving customers more autonomy by making it easier to browse the store’s items. It’s equipped with a mirror that identifies the garment the customer is trying on and displays other look options and matching accessories.
And this technology doesn’t just make buying clothes easier — it works for cosmetics too. Take the Japanese brand Shiseido and its Digital Cosmetic Mirror, which not only lets customers try out different products to create a makeup look, but also suggests products that suit their face and, at the end of the experience, prints a list of every product used in the look.
2. Geomarketing
Geomarketing is a branch of marketing that takes the customer’s global positioning into account to create more targeted campaigns. Since we now have location technologies that work through smartphones with excellent accuracy, why not start tracking customers’ locations inside the store?
This type of POS activation is mainly used to collect data for developing new layout strategies for large stores and new visual merchandising approaches. By gathering data on the paths customers tend to take through the store and how long they usually stop in each section, it’s possible to come up with new ways of organizing the space that lead customers to interact more with the store and its products.
3. Sensory marketing
To establish itself, every brand needs to adopt a visual identity that embodies its values, speaks to its target audience and showcases its products. This visual identity carries over to the POS, since it allows customers to be immersed in the brand’s values while they shop.
But why should this immersion be purely visual? Sensory marketing suggests that, to fully create the desired experience, you need to go further and engage the other senses as well.
A swimwear store, for example, can invest in sensory marketing that helps customers feel transported to the beach, connect with the brand’s values and, as a result, strengthen their desire for the product. It’s important, then, for the environment to deliver the right emotional response: in this case, values such as youth, adventure, connection with nature, body care and so on.
Music branding — using music to shape the atmosphere — is already common today in big-brand stores. When it comes to touch, there’s the example of Fábula, a children’s clothing label. Unlike other stores, kids can touch everything there, and the decor makes that clear with giant fabric bears and books ready to be drawn in.
4. Invisible payment
This is an innovative service that’s still being refined, but it won’t be long before it becomes established in fashion stores. It involves reducing — or, ideally, completely hiding — the payment process in stores.
This way, customers no longer need to wait in line to pay for their products, since a faster credit card payment system is put in place. Using a smartphone app that stores their credit card information, customers add the products they want to buy and pay right from their phone.
At the Amazon Go store in the United States, it’s even easier. When customers leave the store, their bill is calculated through an app that stores information about the products they picked, which are identified during the visit by cameras and shelf sensors.
Did you enjoy today’s post? If these trends feel new to you, imagine how your customers will feel! Now it’s your turn to think about these innovative concepts and propose something new for your store.
If you’re looking to implement innovative POS activations in your business or you’re curious about the use of digital technologies in retail, you’ve come to the right place! Subscribe to our newsletter and stay up to date with the latest from the blog.
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