Library Dissertation Showcase

An investigation into experiential retail towards high ­involvement products in brick and mortar retailers

  • Year of Publication:
  • 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate experiential retail towards high involvement products, whilst using FGS Furnishings as a case study. This paper aimed to identify changes in customer shopping behaviour and the impact of e­commerce on bricks-and-mortar’s and customers, whilst providing insights into how high-street retailers can make suitable changes with the example of experiential retail and brandscapes. Experiential retail can be considered the future of retail, as it provides customers with a completely memorable and unique shopping experience, which is not possible to experience online nor possible to be provided by all businesses. To investigate this further, current literature has been analysed along with the conduction of primary research. Which involved a mixed ­methods approach of a self-competed online questionnaire obtaining one hundred and ten responses which was then followed by ethnographic research that was conducted at FGS Furnishings, obtaining five interviewees. The use of a mixed­ methods research approach provided in-depth information and a richness of data, which helped support the originality of this study. Furthermore, these findings found that customer shopping behaviour has changed, and e-commerce has become a popular method to shop, impacting brick-and-mortar businesses and customers. However, this study also found that experiential retail has a positive impact towards high involvement products and customers decision on which stores to visit and can convince customers to visit high-street shops compared to shopping online.

PLEASE NOTE: You must be a member of the University of Lincoln to be able to view this dissertation. Please log in here.