Pity the executives of luxury appliance brands: In 2019, it’s not enough to have a great product anymore. Beautiful ads, hooky marketing? Everyone has that. And it’s certainly not enough to open a regular showroom—you need an experience center.
The term “experience center” comes from the world of consumer retail strategy, and like most neologisms, an exact definition is hard to come by. Broadly speaking, it’s a retail environment where customers are encouraged to have an interaction with the product—which could mean anything from a racetrack-adjacent Porsche showroom to an Aveda shop where customers can get personalized skin-care advice.
While it’s tricky to pin down exactly what counts as an “experience,” experts agree why it’s important: In the wake of the internet’s continued assault on brick-and-mortar retail, presentation counts. “Just telling someone isn’t good enough anymore,” says Amberlee Isabella, a retail designer and strategist at Gensler. “You need to show them. And the most ‘sticky’ experiences are those that connect users to a larger purpose.”
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