Effectiveness of Pop-Ups as Experiential Marketing Tool: Demand Perspective - Essay Example

Pop-Up and Revitalization of UK High Street College: Effectiveness of Pop-Ups as Experiential Marketing Tool: Demand Perspective According to McNickel (2004, p. 1), experiential marketing comprises the amplification of the brands’ essence into a conglomerate of physical, tangible and interactive experience that revamps the particular brand. On the other hand, Pop Ups retail is the establishment of a highly experiential marketing surrounding aimed at product line or brand promotion. It is available for a short time frame and confined within smaller areas that employ a more comprehensive and appealing face-to-face interactions with the representatives of a particular brand driven by need to attract consumers (Gordon, 2004). The outstanding feature of pop up is the fact that it is temporary and spring and intentionally relinquished after a short time duration. As noted by McCole (2004), establishing brand essence has a prerequisite by organizations to evaluate and react to unilateral and emotional issues affecting consumers. The outstanding significant of the pop ups that is beneficial to revitalization of the UK high streets is its ability to present valuable platform for facet-face interactions with brand representatives as well as the activities of the lifestyle that adopts the brand’s essence (“Gen Y”, 2005). According to Ponsonby-Mccabe and Boyle (2006), the authors identified another beneficial feature of pop ups that is significant to help revamp the UK high streets in that they assert that a particular brand’s loyalty results from a repeated application or brand experience. The experience with a brand, therefore, culminates into emotional and cognitive impacts for the consumer with respect to the brand. Addressing and creating a sustainable brand loyalty is a prerequisite for the attainment of a long-run competitive advantage. In this case, realization and recognition of this key factor will help revamp the UK high streets and will see more shops that were already closed being re-opened. In addition, Jack Morton Worldwide (2007), study that circumvented around experiential marketing concluded that live experiences owns the authority and/or powers to determine the advocacy of the brand that triggers positive attitudes towards a particular brand. In this case, Pop Ups is an outstanding, proactive strategy to counteract the online shopping that has increasingly becoming a nightmare to UK high streets shops. The pop ups are the best driving force behind the Experiential Marketing that has been described as being not a fad (McCole 2004). Experiential marketers through the Pop Ups strategies counteracts the ill-fated earlier focus on customer satisfaction that is no longer appealing to ever-rising competition. Revitalization of the UK high streets must start from uprooting the traditional retail approaches. According to Collins (2004), there is an urgent need to rebrand the ancient unbecoming traditional retail strategies through “guerilla” approaches. The “guerrilla” approach refers to a situation where a more comprehensive and lifestyle-focused brand experience is executed with totally a non-traditional but resource-constrained procedures to counteract fluctuations in consumer preferences (Collins, 2004). The noted problem with the declining sales in the UK high streets can only be revitalized and revamped through Experiential Marketing closely driven by intensive employability of Pop Ups through co-produced and interactive retail experience. Consumer empowerment has resulted from consumer experience that has not only led to brand awareness but also product knowledge buildup. In addition, there is a need by the UK high Streets retailers to adopt retail experience that establishes valuable shopping destinations and other associated key issues leading to increased consumers’ brand experience. The key factors that are inevitabilities to revamp the UK high Street circumventing around the Experiential Marketing are; opportunities for consumer accessibility, experience with retailers and brands. There is a need to engage closely in experiences with retailers to establish accessibility in the minds of the consumers enhance the strength of the brand as well as enabling consumers to remember the retail in respective memories. The online business transaction have recognized the fact that traditional advertisements have over the recent past shown declining impacts. For this reason, revitalization of UK high Streets would be at a deadlock if pop ups counteractive measures are not employed to drive Experiential Marketing. The UK High Streets retailers should focus their marketing strategies on a long term framework where customers are continuously engaged. This long-term consumer’s engagement culminates into increased customers’ emotional attachment to the organizations’ commodities or brands. Online shopping has adopted this strategy and challenging them would be daunting without clearly and proper employability of Pop Ups. Pop ups offer has a unique feature of creating awareness in a particular location about a particular product line but will not necessarily sell in such a location. In so doing, they increase the demands and consumer knowledge about a particular brand. In addition to increased brand knowledge, this marketing strategy issue free samples to the consumers and offer other customers’ appealing services than online sales and raise the demand for brand based on immediate customer feedbacks during the pop ups events. Pop is more appealing to the revitalization of the UK high Street retails as its applicability is expansive beyond the traditional retail environment as well as those firms concerned with reestablishing retail environment (apparel retailers and restaurants). A typical example is when Unilever established its Suave Shampoo Pop-Up Salon for five days where its representative conveyed the valuable knowledge about the products to potential consumers, issued free Shampoos and other free samples, haircuts as well as hand massages using the brand products (CEBR 2014, p. 17). The undertaking led to increased knowledge about the product as visitors got free information that was necessary to make a rational decision on whether to purchase the products and become loyal consumers to the Unilever brands. Revitalization of the UK high Streets can take this form that stands to offer the best counteractive measures to Online sales based on its ability to avail face-to-face interactive sessions. Such face-to-face interaction leads to increased consumer loyalty as they feel cared for and hence knowledgeable about a particular brand. To begin the process of revitalizations, the retailers in UK should employ the use of event Pop Ups as well as mobile Pop Ups (Shanaham 2005). Besides increased awareness and demand about a particular brand will be achieved by employing guerilla marketing technique such as word-of-mouth in place of mass media that will not be as much appealing to customers(Being Spaces”, 2006). A typical supportive evidence to support this approach can be linked to Netherlands Dommelsch Beer Pop-Ups free concerts which were excellently executed. Another successful use of guerilla marketing via the use of word-of-mouth to drive the experiential marketing event was conducted by Martini that established a roaming bar for a period of two weeks in Belgium that resulted to increased demand for Martini brand-based cocktails hence increased sales (Bell & Ternus 2006, p. 36). Pop ups are applicable and linked to tourist events employed in small-based experiential marketing in their scarce time availability driven by the need to market a particular brand. Pop ups features such as higher degrees of interactive abilities, surprises as well as fleeting elements presents engaging experiences that are relevant to the ever changing desires of consumers hence provide retailers better return-on-investments benchmarked against the buzz ratio to short-run nature of investments(Hays 2004; “Pop Up retail: Brand environment”, 2005). Since rational consumers prefer more less and will also purchase when marginal utility is equal to the price of the brand products, Pop Ups will help revitalize the UK High Streets due to its related benefits to the consumers such as, 1. Leads to increased consumers results excitement resulting from the experience of the products and hence attractive to customers. 2. Pop ups have presented customers with valuable avenues that exclusively make help them gain more products insights and experiences. 3. The consumers always excited by innovations (discovery) and surprise to which Pop ups have embraced. 4. Pop ups are beneficial in driving the experiential marketing as it renders consumers with the possibility to better frameworks where they gather knowledge and test the usability of the commodities. 5. The ability of the Pop Ups to offer valuable services and free samples to consumers has attracted massive demand culminating to increased sales and hence effective demand for the brand’s products. 6. Pop Ups have also led to proper guidance to the potential customer and hence enabling the consumers to make rational decisions before purchase and hence wise spending than the online shopping. 7. Besides the principle objective of increasing demand and sales for a particular brand, the Pop Ups have successfully incorporated elements of desired entertainments to prospective, and potential customer is resulting into increased demand and customers loyalties. In conclusion, Pop Ups will effectively revamp and revitalize the UK High streets retailers through its outstanding benefits that properly counteracts the effects of online sales. There is a need to by the UK high Street retailer to install the requirement to execute the Pop Ups retail (Being Spaces & Brand Spaces”, 2006, p. 43). The problem is the declining demand, but pop ups present avenue to reverse the notion of online shopping that lacks face-face interactive sessions with the consumers. Besides, it does not issue free sample, or if it does, it is limited compared to pop ups experiential marketing. Reference Being Spaces & Brand Spaces” (2006), Trend watching, retrieved October 1, 2006 from http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/brand-spaces.htm. Bell, J. & Ternus, K. (2006). Silent selling - best practices and effective strategies in visual merchandising. New York: Fairchild. Bigham, L. (2005), “Experiential Marketing: A Survey of Consumer Responses,” White CEBR (2014) Britain’s Pop-Up Retail Economy. London, EE. Clarke, D. Perry, P. and Densen, H. (2012) ‘The sensory retail environment of small fashion boutiques’. Journal of Fashion Marketing & Management, 16(4), pp. 492-510. Collins, C. (2004), “You Want It? You Got It - Instantly. Retailers Have Gone Beyond Gen Y to Marketers: Engage Us with Experiential Marketing (2005), PR Newswire, November 30, 2005. Gribben, R. ‘Pop-up shops bring breath of fresh air to high street. Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2014, pg 8. Hays, C. L. (2004), “Stores That Pop Up and Go Away, On Purpose,” New York Times, December 7, 2004, G-14. Jack Morton Worldwide (2007), “What is Experiential?” retrieved March 1, 2007 fromhttp://www.jackmorton.com/us/home/ Jack Morton Worldwide. (2006), Jack Morton White Paper No. 7, retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://www.jackmorton.com/us/philosophy/whitepaper.asp. Kent, T. & Brown, R. (2009) eds. Flagship marketing: concepts and places. London: Routledge. (Chapter 5) Kent, T. and Brown, R. (2009) eds. Flagship marketing: concepts and places. London: Routledge. (Chapter 5) Kim, H., Fiore, A-M., Niehm, L.and Jeong, M. (2010) ‘Psychographic characteristics affecting behavioural intentions towards pop-up retail’. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 38(2), pp.133-154. Kotler, P. (1973), ‘Atmospherics as a Marketing Tool’, Journal of Retailing, 49(4), pp. 48-64. Levy, M., Weitz, B. and Grewal, D. (2014) Retailing management, 9th edn. New York: McGraw Hill Education. (pp. 196-197 and Chapter 17) Manlow, V. and Nobbs, K. (2013) ‘Form and function of luxury flagships’, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 17(1), pp. 49-64. McCole, P. (2004), “Refocusing Marketing to Reflect Practice,” Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 22(5), 531-539. McGoldrick, P. (2002) Retail Marketing. 2nd edn. London: McGraw-Hill Education (Chapter 12). McNickel, D. (2004), “Hands on Brands: Feel Them. Do Them. Be Them,” New Zealand Marketing Magazine, May 2004, 10. Niehm, L., Fiore, A-M., Jeong, M. and Kim H-J. (2007) ‘Pop-up retail’s acceptability as an innovative business strategy and enhancer of the consumer shopping experience’. Journal of Shopping Center Research, 13(2), pp. 1-30. Nobbs, K., Moore, C. M. and Sheridan, M. (2012) ‘The flagship format within the luxury fashion market’, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 40(12), pp. 920-934. Plimmer, G. (2013) Retail: ‘Pop-Ups here to stay as line blurs between internet and high street’. Financial Times, 8 October, 2013. Ponsonby-Mccabe, S. and E. Boyle (2006), “Understanding Brands as Experiential Spaces: Axiological Implications for Marketing Strategists,” Journal of Strategic Marketing, 14(2), 175-189. Retail Week (2014) Are High Streets Hotting Up? 4 July, 2014 pp. 18-20 Scamell-Katz, S. (2012) The art of shopping - how we shop and why we buy. London: LID Publishing. Spena, T.L., Carida, A., Colurcio, M. and Melia, M. (2011) ‘Store experience and co-creation: the case of temporary shop’. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, (40)1, pp. 21-40. Surchi, M. (2010) ‘The temporary store: a new marketing tool for fashion brands’. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 15(2), pp. 257-270. Traditional Stores, Catalogs, and Websites. Now They Offer Opportunities 24/7,” The Christian Science Monitor, 96(228), 13. Underhill, P. (2009) Why we buy - the science of shopping, revised edn. London: Simon & Schuster Read More