Active Design

Retail consumers are a changing bunch and its very important for a retailer to stay on top of what her choices are and how to make her "Act" on those choices. A very interesting article by Jonathan Dodd of G2 Worldwide published in the Hub Magazine delves into the idea of "Active Design".

The Need: Mr. Dodd says that experience based shopping can no longer be restricted to the high end retailers like Printemps, Slefridges etc. "....in a world where virtually every product category is suffering from brand proliferation and time-pressured shoppers are being enticed by ever more sophisticated retail offerings, effective design has to do more. It must work for the benefit of the shopper as well as the retailer and brand owner. It has to sell actively." An interesting statistic provided in the article states "According to POPAI, supermarket shoppers are exposed to 1.6 pieces of instore material every second. And yet less than one in five is noticed"

In the article, Mr Dodd enunciates some basic principles of "Active Design" through the example of Apple stores and says that the same idea can apply to supermarket stores which carry a much wider assortment.