Experience isn't the word anymore; it's about emotion. Retail design needs to be about creating an emotional connection, and not just designing a physical experience. The better brands are making strides to be more emotional—not just in the physical experience, but also how you feel when you're buying a product or using it. How does it connect to your life?
Experiential is almost neutral at this point, whereas emotional is the outcome. It has to be more purposeful than just designing a retail space. You can walk away from an experience and still have no emotion. It's shifting things from transactions to transferring brand value with an emotional connection. Tapping into the sensory elements that create unconscious points of connection. Even with technology, there's a lot of talk about AI, but it's more in the context of what can it do to tap into emotion, and move beyond just the logistics of retail. Emotional motivators—less uniform and predictable that consumer behaviors—can change by industry, brand, and touchpoint requiring retailers to take a more agile approach to attract and engage consumers.
