Creating an emotional bond between the consumer and the retail environment is critical. Consumers need an emotional connection with the retail space to make them feel valued. Our relationship with the world is emotive. Recently; design science has shown an increasing interest in this emotional impact of product design. And although this has stimulated some valuable attempts to formalize and model design emotions, the fact remains that emotion is holistic and an effect of the overall quality of the product or service, and the cultural, and personal values of the user. It seems as if emotion has become just one of the many design demands. Good design is desirable design, and design for emotion is not about products and services that feel good, but about products and services that make us feel amazing and inspired.

Retail now is about putting ideas and experiences into context, in ways that are convincing to today’s savvy consumers, that engage consumers emotionally rather than treating them as passive recipients. This is a big subject with many different angles, but an essential one to incorporate into any new retail concept.

The “wow” factor is not enough - consumers want emotional engagement with retail design. Wellbeing: Make the environment special Customers do not want a cookie-cutter mentality from shop design; they love to shop in great environments that engage with them personally.

-In the Fornarina flagship in London, the architect wanted to create the feel of customers being “swallowed whole” as they entered the store’s glowing interior. A compelling immersive and memorable shopping experience that delivers the brand mission of creating a dreamlike, multisensory experience.

Giving stores soul - Shops need a heart and a soul to create atmosphere. Look after heads as well as hearts: They care about social and ethical issues. Entertain them They deserve it. It’s about being content rich and culturally relevant. Customer sophistication. Consumers are product-saturated - they now want atmosphere and service to connect with emotionally. Help them navigate your store efficiently. Don’t waste their time. Be an expert at what you’re good at Customers love an expert. Show them you know them They want you to give them what they want before they know what it is.

-Apple is still the best brand at encouraging community, with lots of places to play with the product in store.

-Normann, Copenhagen, where the customer is embraced into a home-style environment.

Experience is exhausting without emotion - Savvy consumers are happy for retail to provide an experience but only if it’s more than surface deep. It’s about belonging. They’re part of your gang Give them somewhere to hang out. Understand their passions They want detail and knowledge.

-Whole Foods Market encourages a great sense of cultural relevance through its products, and ensures its customers know the story.

-10 Corso Como offers a complete range of product perfectly curated for the customer base. The largest and probably the best stocked of the multi-brand stores with a generous inventory. In this respect, 10 Corso Como acts more like a very small department store than a boutique complete with women’s and men’s fashions, housewares, fragrances and cosmetics, books and even has several of it’s own music compilation CDs.

Chasing e-commerce - E-commerce is becoming an option for many consumers and, to keep terrestrial shoppers, retailers must realize they need to be inspiring and engaging. Lifestyle merchandising is a point of differentiation. Retailers can become curators of the perfect life for their customers. It’s not just about one piece of cool merchandise that looks good, it’s all the other cool bits of merchandise that product is connected to, putting forward a matrix of choices that are given value by the fact that they have been edited down from a much bigger selection and are linked together through lifestyle relevance. Keep it local: visual merchandising environments at a local level. This is crucial to creating a good brick and mortar story.