Retail Innovation - The Future of Fashion Retail

customers or just the ones that found technology easy to use. The interviews heavily focused on the digitalisation of the customer experience and how the different initiatives were implemented.

In the interview with Natalia (Interview 1, 2021), she mentioned that a lot of the changes were really geared heavily towards the younger generations and demanded more consideration for older generations. Natalia explained that when making changes in how shopping is experienced in a time of uncertainty, companies need to consider writing easy-to-follow manuals that could be adopted by generations that do not see technology as easy to use.

As we conducted our interviews there was very little reflection on how older generations would use these new digital solutions. In our interview with Dan, we asked him specifically about Pandora's main customer base, in hope that he could define how they target their solution. He replied by saying “I don’t know, I mean anybody buying jewellery” (Interview 4, 2021, 20:54).

In our literature review we defined customer centricity to be a strategy in which customer needs are put in the centre of an organisational value proposition. In our discussion with Natalia on this topic, she indicated that this was possibly a reason people still like physical retail as it gave them the opportunity to be looked after, and have their needs met by a real person rather than just being behind a screen.

(interview 1 & 4, 2021). The Pandora team told us how they used Design Thinking to come up with new innovative ways that can ensure a growing customer base. Dan (Interview 4, 2021) told us about the agile project teams that who would work in fast ‘sprints’ of two weeks to come up with new ideas that could be implemented quickly and could have some of the biggest impact. Dan informed us that the team had come up with 140 ideas, which then were narrowed down to 11. Birna and Dan (Interview 2 & 4, 2021) mentioned that the company had to pivot a lot of their roadmap to focus on the current situation and adapt quickly. The aim was that customers would not perceive a difference between shopping online or shopping in the store.

4.2.5.1 Transformation of the Physical Retail Store

When interviewing Natalia (Interview 1, 2021), we discussed the traditional uses of physical retail spaces. Being a designer, she always focused on keeping customers in the store wondering as long as possible. We find that perhaps that traditional idea of keeping customers in the stores can bring a health hazard to other customers as well as the personnel (Interview 1, 2021). Therefore, we discussed how retailers may have to reconsider designing stores that reshape the way customers behave in the stores. Natalia reflected on an increasing trend of brands downsizing even before COVID-19 had started; and she shares her ideas on what this may possibly look like going forward. “I think it will be more of a showroom in a way. Of course, you're supposed to be able to buy clothes, but I'm not sure if it's going to be all those rows of T-shirts, or if you're going to be able to try and then you know, maybe it's smarter stock control, maybe some in store stock so you can get the product right away.

But you know, it's more of an experience to come into the store” (Interview 1, 2021, 13:10). Although these trends, Natalia explains, can have different phycological effects on customers. Sharing her expertise, Natalia (interview 1, 2021) conveys to us that shops that look more like a ‘showroom’ also have the tendency to appear more expensive in comparison to shops that have more items of clothing and are fuller in design.

In the interviews with the Pandora team, we discussed the use of virtual queues which would contribute to physical retail stores design in the future. As a jewellery store that requires handling the items, this could pose many health risks. Therefore, such features could really help shops ensure people are not congregating inside.

The idea behind the virtual queue system could be a more permeant implementation (Interview 4, 2021). Dan gave us his honest opinion on the transformation that retail stores could take in the future and mentioned: “the new store concept that some of the teams are working on was not related to COVID but had the outcome of COVID. Perhaps that’s where some of the new store concepts will go towards in the future. We're definitely going down a more technology driven route within our stores, which is what you'll see in most big global brands, I would

say, there'll be some form of technology driven application to either improve client telling or personalization for the consumer” (Interview 4, 2021, 10:33). We further explored this topic with Ryan as he also noted that already before COVID-19 there was change in the way retail stores were being designed. He believes that going forward we would see way more of these changes, more so now that COVID-19 seems to have accelerated how we use the physical stores and what they now mean to us. Ryan elaborated "I think this is a little bit less related to Corona because there was already a shift happening in the retail industry, how we design stores and what our customers expect when they shop in a physical retail store” (Interview 3, 2021, 22:07). Our discussion focused on clarifying that COVID-19 was not the catalyst to the change but was very much a key play in what Ryan believes would shape the change. “You're going to see much more temporary or movable furniture; you're going to see stuff that can be shifted from location to location without a big cost. You may even see things go as far as furniture that can be sort of flat packed so, that it's easier to take apart. All of these design elements, where we used to really build a lot and make the space into a place where the brand could live, and function for 15 years will change.

You'll see a lot more flexibility in that way" (ibid). Ryan (Interview 3, 2021) seemed to be of the opinion that changes in retail will come across faster and designs will change more frequently. This idea about how fast retail design might change in the future was also very similar to the opinion that Natalia held, as she described the design to be more connected to art then a traditional retail store.

As we discussed the future of retail design with Ryan, he also pointed out that at this stage we do not have much of an understanding what of these changes are permanent and what trends are just useful due to the Corona lockdowns. As we do not know the long-term effects of the virus, Ryan believes that people really want to go back to a normal, but he is aware that nobody knows what that looks like. What kind of restrictions might follow us into the future? When we will be not live-in fear of contracting a virus?

4.2.5.1 The Role of Sustainability in the Future of Retail

As we spoke to our participants, they all had strong indication that sustainability will be an ongoing reason to continue innovating and creating new ways of doing it. It was quite evident throughout the interviews that just being a year into it a lot of changes in our lives have happened. The one thing they all agreed on was that people were not going to let go of the holding companies accountable to ensure transparency. We cover a lot of how sustainability plays a major role in retail in our section on sustainability. This section elaborates on the effects of this demand and on continuous retail innovation.

When interviewing Dan (Interview 4, 2021), we asked if he felt the company was under pressure to act environmentally conscious. His reaction was very enthusiastic as he confirmed that customers are very much anticipating that companies will change evermore to show their efforts on being environmentally strategic. He directed us to Pandora's website to read about the strategy they have formed, and the extent that they are willing to go to. Birna (Interview 2, 2021) gave us an insight on Pandora's strategy to make man-made diamonds more popular and more common in their collection (Teather, 2021).

The interviews gave us some incredible insights that could be well complemented to the theories and literature we explored earlier. In our discussion we will cover the meaning of these results, their implications and all the limitations.

Discussion

In this section, we will be presenting the findings of the participant observation and the conducted interviews.

We have decided to structure this chapter into five areas to answer the five main themes explored throughout our paper. In this way, we will ensure the consistency of the research and how it was conducted.

After spending quite some time researching different papers and interviewing people in the industry, the conversation around our key topics has stayed consistent. Digitalizing the customer experience could be the ultimate solution to bringing people back to the physical stores. It is a time in which retailers most certainly would have turned to technology to ensure both the public safety of their customers and employees, but also ensure that even through a health crisis they maintained a growth in sales. All studies thus far showed that brands that did not focus on uplifting their digital customer experience, would struggle to survive long. The pandemic was a definite push for many organisations to ensure that they met the technological needs even faster than the natural market had demanded them to (Interview 2 & 4, 2021).

The observational study allowed us to explore human behaviour as a significant health crisis took place. This allowed us to see how customers felt shopping in physical stores during a health crisis as lockdowns slowly eased.

The interviews allowed us to explore in-depth concerns on how retailers worked towards providing well-rounded customer experiences even when physical stores were an inaccessible channel to their customers. We gathered interesting insights on how physical stores were being handled to ensure public health and safety. In addition, other approaches that enhanced the overall customer experience through a more digital strategy have been analysed.