Pop-Up Retail

The Evolution, Application and Future of Ephemeral Stores

Ghalia Boustani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000422443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Retail Industry
• Index: Business

Ephemeral stores, also known as pop-up stores, have existed since the beginning of trade between consumers. They appeared in city centres, villages or other convenient places where they proposed an offering and then disappeared as soon as its offering was wearied. This is a very similar experience to the current phenomenon; ephemeral stores appear unannounced and disappear without notice or can morph into something else. Brands adopt these stores because of the array of benefits they present and their characterizing features. Consumers, on the other hand, are not only positively reactive to ephemeral stores, they actively demand these novel, engaging, satisfying or beneficial stores more than ever as they provide them with constant change and surprise.

Focusing on ephemeral retailing, this book aims to provide a clear understanding of what it is, how it developed and why it gained importance in today's busy retail scene. As many brands are adopting ephemeral stores into their distribution channels or using them as unique touchpoints, this book proposes a categorization of ephemeral retailing, explaining different ephemeral store vocations based on different brand strategies and objectives. With many professional opinions about ephemeral stores and a body of academic research developing, this book aims to combine all knowledge about the topic into one concise publication: it clarifies, consolidates and creates a clear understanding about the topic of ephemeral retailing that will inform future research and activity.

The book is written for academics, students and retail professionals with an interest in relevant fields such as retail marketing and management, brand management and distribution.

1 From retail to ephemeral retail

1.1 Bringing traditional stores closer to ephemeral stores

1.1.1 An evolution from traditional marketing to experiential marketing

It has been argued that marketing research is most valued when it is placed in a framework that goes beyond a specific event, and therefore that will study the role of marketing in a broader economic and social context (Savitt, 1980). Although marketing research was established in 1936, it was not until the 1980s that the field of marketing became institutionalized with regular conferences, formal associations, newsletters and websites (Witkiwski & Jones, 2016). Marketing has become a real discipline in its own right, with reasonably distinct methods of generating and presenting knowledge heavily influenced by training and academic expectations. It has evolved from a product orientation to an experiential orientation which encompasses customer-centred practices. At a retail level, customer access to brand offerings has also evolved and the conception of retail spaces and retail practices has also followed the experiential orientation.

Focused on spending (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982) and supply, traditional marketing approaches have evolved through a logic of focusing on the consumer and then moving towards a consumer/distributor relationship. At the very opposite of the spectrum, the development of experiential marketing is a result of the existential desire of the current consumer who seeks to consume out of desire rather than necessity. For experiential marketing, the consumer buys more for the emotional experience he can get and less for the offer’s functional attributes (Badot & Cova, 2003); experiential marketing therefore leads to more impulsive than thoughtful purchases (Andrieu et al., 2004).

An experiential marketing approach would highly invest in the retail environment as well as other online/offline brand touchpoints. When in contact with the environment, the consumer is immersed in an experience, but this experience is understood as both a “process” and a “final state to be reached” (Carù & Cova, 2006). Marketing has evolved towards meeting customer expectations and has become more controlled by them (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 From traditional to experiential marketing

Traditional marketing	Relationship and marketing	Experiential marketing
The beginning of the marketing concept in 1910 when we sought to understand the agricultural markets and the role of all actors (institutions, distributors, users, consumers) in price formation. The concept is structured around a vision of social and economic processes related to the market: a “marketing system” (Pras, 2012).	New customers, described as existential, have become less responsive to traditional marketing stimuli. This has prompted brands to add new elements to the marketing mix which are “personnel, format and presentation” (Constantinides, 2006). Brands have therefore taken action on the sales environment to offer customers “hedonic rewards” that enhance their shopping activities (Lemoine, 2005). With the advent of relationship marketing, the goal was to find products or services for customers and not the other way around (Badot & Cova, 2003). In addition to the traditional “4 Ps”, brands focus on selecting suppliers and their service delivery and designing their physical environments to meet the needs of target customers (Fowler & Bridges, 2010).	The strategic approach to experiential marketing assumes that brands develop a “set of attributes loaded with meaning and values” in order to provide a distinctive experience when the customer visits the brand (Ochs & Remy, 2006), which offers a surprising or even “spectacular and extravagant” environment (Carù & Cova, 2006). Other research points out that experiential marketing goes beyond consumer-brand contact at the point of sale as it integrates all points of contact of retailers with consumers (Niehm et al., 2007) and amplifies the essence of the brand.
Traditional marketing developed in response to the industrial age (Schmitt, 1999). Then appeared the concept of marketing mix. First approached by Borden in 1942, then approached by Culliton who, in 1948, described the decision-maker as a “mixer of ingredients”, the marketing mix was used to express the fact that management could achieve certain predetermined objectives by the manipulation of variables that McCarthy, later, defined by the “4 Ps”. Likewise, the concept of marketing management also appeared in the 1950s, defined as decision-making concerning products, promotion and distribution channels (Flambard- Ruaud, 1997). The marketing concept is particularly resilient. While it has evolved and deformed according to the times and the environment, it returned to its initial form in the 1990s, admittedly transformed but staying in phase with its fundamentals (Pras, 2012).	The first attempts to enrich the point of- sale experience began with sensory marketing (Antéblian et al., 2013). It is a source of production of emotional effects (Bonnin, 2002), and is therefore a set of controlled action variables that the brand controls to create a specific multi-sensory atmosphere around its offer (Filser, 2003). Moreover, brands have begun to pay more attention to customer senses previously neglected at the point of sale: hearing, smell, taste and touch (Daucé & Rieunier, 2002) (Spence et al., 2014). When designing atmospheric stores (Lemoine, 2004), distributors naturally use atmospheric variables to elicit emotional responses from customers. These emotions provide joy, excitement and a satisfied customer mood (Srinivasan & Srivastava, 2010).	Experiential marketing from a brand perspective: Three phenomena have taken place simultaneously in the business environment and have caused companies and brands to abandon traditional marketing to create experiences for their customers. These three phenomena, namely the ubiquity of information technology, brand supremacy and the ubiquity of communications and entertainment, were the first signs of an entirely new marketing approach; the experience economy (Schmitt, 1999). Later on, the emergence of the experience economy and experiential marketing gave birth to an experiential approach to retail (Shilpha & Rajnish, 2013).
Traditional marketing has become less effective nowadays (Niehm et al., 2007) and consumers are less reactive to its transactional strategies. Traditional marketing concepts and methodologies describe the nature of products, consumer behaviour and competitive activity in the market. They are used to develop new products; plan product lines and brand extensions; design communications; and respond to competitive activities (Rhee & Mehra, 2006). Traditional marketing has been characterized by a narrow definition of the offer, the definition of competition and the benefits of the brand’s offer. Management methods were analytical, quantitative and verbal (Schmitt, 1999). As a key element of the marketing mix, the assortment represented a strategic positioning tool for customer acquisition and retention. Decisions regarding quality, price levels and variety of the assortment determined a retailer’s position in the market (Hansen & Singh, 2009) (Bauer et al., 2012).	Brands have also considered the interplay between variables because consumers assess a shopping environment in a holistic way: appropriate background music, bright lighting, or scents to stimulate and awaken or, conversely, to soothe them (Antéblian et al., 2013). Research has provided evidence of important point-of-sale atmosphere interactive effects on consumers’ perceptçion of brand image and has found that perception is inherently multi-sensory (Spence et al., 2014). Researchers also found that consumers who perceive retail environments as more pleasant display a higher level of satisfaction and a positive experience towards the brand. (Daucé & Rieunier, 2002).	To avoid the risk of trivializing consumption experiences by considering the consumer as a passive spectator, the goal of experiential marketing should translate the essence or associations of the brand “into a set of tangibles, physical, interactive experiences” (Chen & Fiore, 2017) and “entertaining” (Russo Spena et al., 2012). This approach places a strong emphasis on the customer experience and views consumption as a holistic experience (Frazer & Stiehler, 2014). Experiential marketing suggests a holistic manipulation of “experiential” elements that will lead to multi-sensory experiences (Foster & McLelland, 2014). For brands, one of the purposes of experiential marketing is to design experiential contexts that differentiate them (Antéblian et al., 2013) and that lead them to obtain competitive advantages through the entertainment offered. However, these contexts must be integrated at every point of touch with the brand: in the store, through marketing communication and advertising, through the website and at events or other brand activities (Niehm et al., 2007).
As for consumers in the traditional marketing era, they were seen as rational decision-makers (Schmitt, 1999). For most of the 20th century, customers were “product takers” and “price takers”, accepting goods dedicated from suppliers (Slywotzky et al., 2000). The development of the marketing mix consisted of “conveying the right message on the right product, at the right price, in the right place, at the right time and to the right person”. With the “passive 4 Ps” application, retailers and other intermediaries were seen as secondary actors in the marketing process. Their responsibilities were confined to the functions of product storage and resale.		Experiential Marketing from a Consumer Perspective: Consumers were seen as “rational decision-makers” before the new experiential approach offered a different view of consumer behaviour; they are now considered to be “thinkers and doers” and as someone whose role goes beyond the act of purchasing (Gentile et al., 2007). Contemporary consumers are therefore in search of meanings or in search of the meaning provided by products (Camus & Poulain, 2008). In addition, the act of buying will be replaced by an immersion in the consumption experience (Russo Spena et al., 2012). Consumers, “rational and emotional” (Frazer & Stiehler, 2014), seek satisfying shopping and consumption experiences that are (Bustamante & Rubio, 2017) emotionally charged (Camus & Poulain, 2008).
Unfortunately, traditional marketing concepts offer little guidance for taking advantage of the emerging experiential economy (Schmitt, 1999). Over the past two decades, as customers have become more sophisticated and have gained more power over the buying process, they have ceased to be price takers. However, they are st...