Designing Retail Experience in the 21st Century

This book explores how corporations in the 21st century design retail experiences, how they engage physical and digital spaces, and how we interact with them.

Covering 2001 to today, Designing Retail Experience in the 21st Century presents readers with a critical, cross-disciplinary perspective on retail design, bringing together scholarship from design, architecture, branding, cultural studies and social studies.

Our retail experience has changed profoundly over the past two decades, largely due to the impact of digital technologies. While the rise of smartphones and online commerce threatened to displace ‘bricks and mortar’ stores, physical shopping has survived and, in some cases, thrived. Today, the most successful brands design experiences that engage customers both within the physical store and in the digital realm. In this book, D.J. Huppatz analyses how corporations design these experiences, how we interact with them, and how they align with broader social, cultural and economic changes.

Eight case studies reveal how some of the largest global retail chains, including Apple, Amazon, Nike, Zara, IKEA and LEGO, and smaller chains such as Aesop and Gentle Monster, utilize design to create engaging experiences. Unlike in the past, such corporations consider design in a continuum that extends from architecture and interiors to product and service design, and from website and digital interactions to social media. At the intersection of design and cultural studies, this book provides a critical survey and understanding of design and retail experience in the 21st century.