book and the store is the actual book contents. The story should be in accord
with the cover.
The store concept comprises the design, the atmosphere, the size and
impersonal selling techniques.Design
The design function is one of the most visible fundamentals of retail store
strategy. It refers to the store layout and elements of its aesthetics such as its
colours, decorations and lighting, among others. The effective combination of
these features often result in enticing and captivating consumers and, of
course, higher purchase probability.
The layout of a store greatly contributes to its image and manipulates traf-
fic flow. In the conventional retailing of consumer goods such as supermar-
ket retailing, the store layout choice follows the most commercially realistic
pattern, which is often an outline called the Grid-Flow Layout. This layout
features long vertical and horizontal rows of display units of goods with a
single entrance and a separate single exit. Another general retailing pattern is
the Guided-Flow Layout, with a pre-determined long path from the store
entrance to its exit, as found in several furniture stores. In mass fashion retail,
the most common and most feasible store layout is called the Free-Flow
Layout. This pattern features several entrances and exits to the store and
allows free movement of customers. It also provides the store with a better
image and enhances the consumer’s mood and feeling. An additional advan-
tage of this pattern is that shoppers are likely to stay in the store for a long
time if the atmosphere is complementary. However, its disadvantage is that
shoppers might fail to spot several products as a result of the lack of a main
entrance and a central exit.
In addition to these essential layout considerations, there are other factors
that are essential in the selection of the luxury store layout. The first factor is
to ensure that the layout best reflects a prestigious image and complements a
luxury atmosphere. The second factor is to ensure that the layout optimizes
the surface area while providing the customer with adequate comfortable
space and distance to appreciate the store and the brand. The third factor is
that the retail layout choice ought to provide room for a form of in-store
animation and entertainment which enhances the image of the brand.
Although each brand has a unique store arrangement that best reflects its
brand personality, the luxury attribute is best shown through variations of the
Free-Flow Layout and the Boutique Layout represented in Figure 4.2.
In addition to the store layout, the colour scheme that a brand adopts in its
store design is essential to its image and positioning. This ensures synchro-
nization of the brand’s identity with the store representations, and cannot be
over-emphasized. For example, the dark colour tones found in the stores of
Alexander McQueen evoke a smouldering sexiness which is associated with82
luxury fashion branding