SPECIAL FOCUS TECHNOLOGY Phygital
w flooring retailers can use technology to connect their digital and ed on current examples from other retailers.
Karndean Inspire Studios © The Shopper Agency
Looking ahead to the immediate future, it’s hard to see how digital could truly replace the physical in this sector, as people will always need to see and touch the product; particularly in daylight, where the true colours of the product can be seen, rather than in the artificial environment of the digital screen. It’s also currently impossible to virtually impart a sense of touch, so the finer details in a piece of engineered wood or LVT on a website will remain as just a 2D impression. The final confirmation of choice is still likely going to come down to how the product looks and feels when it sits in your hand.
This connection with the physical has, of course, been partly overcome with the ability to order sample swatches online, but there are remaining parts of the purchasing journey where people are still looking for that expert human guidance.
In fact, the Karndean approach is probably signalling that the future is likely to become a more rounded, guided, and multi channelled experience. In-store environments will be designed to support the initial online experience, further enhancing those initial virtual choices,
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by providing a comfortable destination, which both inspires and builds confidence, and thereby completing the journey of choice.
And this is where new technologies, and indeed some current ones, are likely to have the greatest impact, particularly when looking to create the balance between the physical experience and the digital experience, to create the perfect ‘phygital’ symbiosis.
It’s not unimaginable that in the near future we would all have the ability to walk into a store with a digital scan of the rooms in your own home and visualise these in a fully immersive, expertly-guided simulation.
In essence, the experience of choosing flooring in this supported way is likely to become the reason to go ‘in-store’, which reflects why people still want to go to IKEA. It’s not just about the product, which they could of course visualise online and purchase from the comfort of their own home, it’s more about the whole experience… and the meatballs.
www.wefathom.com Tomorrow’s Retail Floors | 27
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