مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

 مجله تحقیقات بازاریابی – Journal of Business Research

As consumers’ demand for memorable experiences continues to grow, creating superior brand experiences is becoming one of the central objectives in contemporary luxury retail (Kim, Ko, Xu, & Han, 2012). While luxury traditionally restricts access to its retail stores in order to create an atmosphere of uniqueness and reverence (Dion & Arnould, 2011), both existing and new target groups are now starting to perceive such a retail strategy as old-fashioned and outdated (Halzack, 2015; Lassus & Freire, 2014). Facing the risk of becoming obsolete in the long run, luxury brands need to find new ways to facilitate consumers’ experiences with the brand and reach out to new target groups without diluting the brand for existing customers. In an effort to overcome the resulting positioning challenge, pop-up brand stores are becoming a popular experiential marketing tool in luxury retail, aimed at creating brand experiences and increasing word of mouth (WOM) within existing and new target groups simultaneously.

Pop-up brand stores are temporary stores that seek to offer customers more approachable access to luxury brands and are usually open for only a couple of weeks. They aim to provide consumers with exciting brand experiences via a unique store concept, a pleasant store atmosphere, and by delivering hedonic shopping value. Indeed, a key distinguishing characteristic of pop-up brand stores is their objective: in focusing on experience creation for consumers, the luxury brand’s goal is not to sell products, but rather to stimulate WOM in order to multiply the reach of the brand in existing and new target groups. An illustrative example is the pop-up brand store operated by French luxury brand Hermès in New York City in 2013. The store was only open for four weeks and included a mini-golf course that incorporated different designs by the luxury fashion label (Fitts, 2013).

Given that the purpose of pop-up brand stores contradicts current business practices in luxury retail, marketers cannot directly measure their value or effectiveness by relying on traditional metrics such as within store sales. Instead, to meaningfully assess the attractiveness of this store format, marketers and researchers need to gauge the extent to which pop-up brand stores are able to leverage brand and nonpurchase related behavioral outcomes for both existing and new customer target groups. Prior research, however, largely neglects to investigate the potential value of customer experience-based strategies in general (Verhoef et al., 2009), and does not assess the effectiveness of pop-up brand stores in particular (Lassus & Freire, 2014).