In today’s global commercial environment, you have to believe that a visual merchandising promotion strategy is what is important in effecting increased profit margins through improved sales and staff throughput. But how well you can put the right visual merchandising display strategy in place can be daunting because the biggest role of providing the shoppers with an unforgettable experience takes skill to simplify components down to those details that are fundamental. Make no mistake that you must consider it a wise investment in expertise and resources for the use of best practice visual merchandising techniques to effectively deal with the challenges in retail. It is primarily about ‘the look and feel’ of the brand in store and for presenting products in the most effective ways that develop loyalty of customers.

Subtleties

The constant manufacturing of brand-new products, inadequacy of shelf space, loss and prevention, conflicting interests of top management and the recurrent variation in consumer choices, all add to the challenging environment for visual merchandisers. In other words, the challenges in retail in relation to the dynamic characteristics of the target market, the changing and volatility of consumer behavior often times makes it increasingly difficult for visual merchandisers to maintain required clarity and consistency. This is what the art of branding is about, and it is as quintessential for environments as it is for products.

Components and Implementation

The details are in the important components of a visual merchandising strategy and implementation to address some of the challenges in retail and ensure enriching returns. These may include:

• The attention-grabbing store signs and displays. Providing product descriptions and promoting schemes like ‘Buy One Get One Free’ using eye-catching fonts.
• Recognizing the importance of integrated retail systems. Effective integration of advanced retail POS system technologies can help control costs and deliver concentrated operability to the business. Given the rapid pace of change within the retail ecosystem, it is essential all IT assets are tracked, monitored and managed in a seamless manner.
• Shopper engagement at POS. Good deals versus fostering relationships and knowing also where social media fits in and the tapping the power of crowd-sourcing to enhance product assortment.
• Effective loyalty systems. Delivering unmatched customer service to valued customers by being proactive and look for people in need of assistance and be a resource, can distinguish your business from the competition and fosters true and effective “relationship marketing“.
• Multichannel retailing. The advent of online stores and mobile technology with e-commerce and m-commerce are latest additions to the multichannel mix of mail order catalogues and bricks and mortar stores and are fresh and interesting avenues and benefit for retailers with more opportunities to get their product in front of customers whom they would not have been able to reach with a single channel.
• New innovations in retail sector. Retail innovation is about driving down costs and driving up spending. Whether it is inventory control or product mix; ecommerce or cost control, the retail sector should have the capacity to accommodate a sustained flow of pioneering products, innovative channels of delivery and ingenious ways of holding down costs to remain profitable in the most competitive consumer markets.

More to these, visual merchandising is an extension of your store’s customer service. Even if you intend to stretch your retail process to web-based shopping, literally changing shoppers’ point-of sale environment, and regardless of any challenges in retail, that importance of your brand’s visual identity should not diminish. The goal is to project a pleasing and more charismatic image because visual merchandising is about customer loyalty, regardless of the point-of-sale environment.