The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines visual merchandising as promoting the sale of goods by their presentation in retail outlets. Visual merchandisers design and set up windows and retail environments. They are creative professionals with training in fashion, graphic design and art, often holding bachelor's degrees from design schools. Visual merchandising must attract customers through color, product and signage placement, emotion, variety and engagement. Successful visual merchandising attracts and engages customers and motivates them to buy.
Elements of Design
Visual merchandising's main purpose is to attract and engage customers to sell products. Color, lighting, texture and order are design elements required for successful visual merchandising to display products and merchandise, set a scene and elicit emotional and physiological responses. Merchandise is arranged neatly and attractively, in a clean environment, with large, clear signage that communicates product, brand and price, communicates successfully with the customer. Colors, lighting, textural elements and arrangement to tell a story or set a scene enhance the communication in ways that entice the customer on deeper levels, creating a lasting impression and encouraging purchase.
Mass display is a visual merchandising technique that groups a large quantity of merchandise together in one place to attract attention to it. Stacking a limited supply of 500 boxes of specialty merchandise together in one place creates a sense of urgency to buy in customers and passersby. The location of the mass display is important to the success of the sale, with placements in high-traffic aisles, at the front of the store near registers, or near similar items, gives higher visibility and sells more than a display in the back of the store or in an unused corner.
Displaying merchandise with a theme tells a story and creates emotion for customers. Beer displayed within a theme of a summer cookout or a football tailgate party, displayed in a cooler with ice on a picnic table or in front of a large screen TV with friends and chips and dip, paint a picture and bring up emotions. Customers can picture themselves enjoying the product and want to relive memories or experience the fun, and buy the displayed product.
An increasingly popular visual merchandising technique is technology display, using video, digital graphics, and music and sound to display merchandise. Colorful graphics, engaging videography, popular music combine with electronic display on flat screen viewers, large and small, to get customers' attention and create instant emotion and desire for the merchandise. Technology display is an accelerated way to show customers the product, how it's used and why they want it. Another advantage of technology display in visual merchandising is that it takes up a small amount of physical space compared with other forms of merchandising that use products and props to tell a story and influence customer sales.
- "Visual Merchandising: Windows and In-Store Displays for Retail"; Tony Morgan; 2008
- "Understanding Aesthetics for the Merchandising and Design Professional"; Ann Marie Fiore; 2010
- flower display image by brelsbil from Fotolia.com