In today’s fast-evolving economy, two things are certain: The marketplace has gone global, and electronic technology is now at the heart of everything from dishwashers and cell phones to MP3 players and microwave ovens.

For our client, manufacturing giant Samsung, the array of branded electronic products it has to offer can easily fill an entire store. This reality presented it with obvious incentives to expand its branded retail-store presence worldwide. Samsung recognized that building a network of Samsung shops around the globe would allow it to “sell the brand,” not just individual products. Freestanding Samsung stores and shop-in-shops would enhance its opportunities to cross-sell product lines, heighten brand visibility and keep its brand message from getting lost among those of competitors.

To execute this plan, Samsung turned to us at Lippincott Mercer. Our long-standing relationship with Samsung dates back to the 1990s, when we were hired to design its original logo. In recent years we have done a number of projects for the Korean electronics maker, including refreshing its brand image by creating a sensory identity program that spanned all media in all of its markets.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
Our expertise working on global-scale retail brand assignments for such clients as McDonald’s, Nissan, Infiniti and others has validated our credentials for helping Samsung grow its retail business. Such projects have also taught us there is much more to a successful branding program than simply picking pleasing color palettes and laying out floor plans. Since Lippincott Mercer was founded in 1943, we have evolved an extensive methodology to assess the preferences and shopping habits of consumers and to benchmark industry and competitive trends.

Without minimizing the importance of design aesthetics, we are keenly aware that the bottom line for our clients is not whether Bodoni Bold makes a better logotype than Sabon. Proof of effectiveness for our corporate clients is evidenced in increased sales and financial returns and greater brand awareness. These objectives are ultimately our objectives, which is why we place so much emphasis on upfront research.

BUILDING THE BASELINE
In the case of Samsung, we participated in conducting focus groups and interviews with more than 4000 people in seven countries—Korea, India, China, Russia, Singapore, Germany and the United States. During this yearlong process, our team interviewed consumers, Samsung management and stakeholders and benchmarked retail trends. We also audited Samsung’s current brand position in all of the company’s key markets and across all of its major competitors.

The target of Samsung’s global retail strategy is upwardly mobile consumers who are savvy about technological innovations and design trends worldwide. Interested in more than a place to buy products, this consumer segment sees shopping as a social experience and rates the relevancy of a store on its ability to inspire, engage and surprise. Their ideal retail environment would be personal and social, bold and refined, dynamic and simple—and unique to the brand.

While this focus-group feedback was consistent in all of Samsung’s markets, creating a single retail brand identity demanded that it resonate emotionally across diverse cultures—with the new middle class in Beijing and New Delhi clamoring for modern luxuries, as well as with hard-to-impress consumers in New York.

THE STORE’S THE THING
It also had to go beyond creating a pleasing retail space and to focus on tapping the drivers of brand loyalty for upwardly mobile consumers. Guiding our analysis were certain accepted tendencies of how consumers typically behave. Specifically, studies have shown a direct link between store opinion and increased sales. In other words, consumers who think positively about a store are more likely to recommend it to others. In turn, they are more prone to recommend products made by the brand and to buy the products themselves. The leap from liking a store to brand loyalty, however, demands emotional commitment to the brand in order for it to become the deciding factor in the purchasing choice.

When that emotional commitment is combined with the conviction that the brand offers superior quality and value, consumers are more willing to pay a premium to buy, even when lower-priced products are available.

Creating a sense that the brand is unique and a cut above other similar products is as much about the shopping experience as about the product itself. Our audits of existing Samsung stores and peer brand stores revealed how consumer perception can be influenced by factors that have nothing to do with the performance of the product. Poor ambient lighting, excessive use of in-store signage and shelf talkers, crowded displays and inferior fixtures in the retail setting add to visual clutter and diminish the perceived quality of the merchandise.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS
As we pursued this project, development of the retail design for the client was continually weighed against key measures: Does it convey the “wow” factor? Does it communicate a premium image? Do the displays inspire, captivate and offer ideas on how the product can fit into or improve quality of life? Does the store feel distinctive, stylish and dynamic—or does it feel like every other shop along the way? Do store personnel enhance the experience by their friendliness, respect and knowledge of the product—and by dressing in a manner consistent with the brand? Do customers enjoy shopping the store and have positive memories when they leave? We had to get to a “yes” consensus on all of these questions to feel that we had arrived at a design solution that would work.

WORKING ACROSS FORMATS
From the start, Samsung stressed that it wanted all of its shops worldwide to exhibit a consistent look and feel, so customers would immediately connect with the brand in whatever country they were in. The retail identity also had to be adaptable to four different types of store format—Showcase, Flagship, Brand and Shop-in-Shop. Samsung looked to us to recommend the right venue for each format, based on surrounding market conditions and projected return on investment for that locale.

Showcase and Flagship formats have large floor plans suitable for product demonstrations, lifestyle displays and education. Brand and Shop-in-Shop formats have smaller footprints with a boutique-like retail environment featuring a limited selection of products. While differing in size and approach, each format has to convey a uniform branded look. In addition to making design elements fit specific format requirements, we were mindful that the overall design vocabulary had to be flexible enough to accommodate distinct cultural biases, existing retail landscapes and space restrictions both inside and outside of the stores.

DECONSTRUCTING CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINTS
Our design implementation phase at Lippincott Mercer includes a methodology that we call “Customer Experience Mapping.” You can see an example of this approach above. Essentially this means that we deconstruct step by step how customers experience the brand at a retail establishment. It starts with what customers see as they approach the exterior of the building and continues on as they enter the store, explore the merchandise, experience product demonstrations and special amenities, move through the checkout process and finally depart.

In the process of mapping how customers experience the store, we analyze and break down the interior environment into discrete touchpoints. At each of these critical spots along the way, our strategy is to reinforce awareness of the brand by introducing a recurring motif of brand identity attributes. In the case of the “approach,” the brand may be communicated through signage, lighting and exterior façade. The product displays also convey a dynamic and consistent design language through fixture design, lighting, layout, and hierarchy and location of products.

At every touchpoint, we consider specific kinds of experiential attributes that will be evoked about the brand—imaginative, passionate, stylish, dynamic, human—and clearly, very identifiably Samsung.

STYLING CUES
The brand identity elements were designed so they could be scaled up or down, depending on the store format and size of space. For fixtures, we integrated simple shapes and rich materials to provide optimum flexibility for the diverse mix of Samsung products, which range from handheld devices to home appliances. Neutral yet dynamic shades of warm white and warm black served as the base for displays, with focused lighting illuminating each product, spaciously set apart like objets d’art in a museum. Translucent colored glass pylons were used to create distinct retail areas and vertical surfaces for information graphics. At the same time, glass dividers introduced trendy vibrant colors throughout the retail space, while imparting both a sense of privacy and views of the activity taking place in the rest of the store. Modular and scalable, this system adapted easily to suit any type of store format, store size and location characteristic—whether an enclosed mall, busy retail thoroughfare or shop-in-shop setting.

THE SENSORY ENVIRONMENT
Color, typography and trademarks have long been the staples of graphic identities, with materials, finishes and the products themselves branding a retail space. Increasingly, however, we recognize that consumers respond to a brand with all of their senses. Sight, smell, sound and touch enhance the shopping experience.

Today more stores and restaurants make sound a part of their identity. The right music—whether jazz, hip-hop, R&B, funk, urban sounds, rock or country—suggests the mood, energy, style and personality of the brand. It can communicate sophistication, global awareness, passion and any number of brand attributes. The same is true of scent, which anyone who passes a bakery can attest to.

We used both sound and scent to reinforce Samsung’s brand distinction. Coincidentally, the scent we arrived at combines natural essences from six continents of the world and exudes a crisp, clean air that elicited a positive response from consumers when tested in all of Samsung’s global markets.

RESEARCH BUILDS TEAMWORK
All of these design elements were a logical outgrowth of what we learned in the discovery phase. Samsung’s willingness to partner with us, rather than simply give us a design assignment, gave us the framework and authority to develop a total global strategy. This teamwork between Lippincott Mercer and our client ensured that the principles for designing, locating and naming the shops stayed in alignment with business and brand objectives. And, importantly, armed with metric studies, anecdotal focus-group comments and analytical data gathered during the research phase, we could substantiate the rationale for our design direction and discuss it in terms that Samsung corporate management could appreciate. The goal, after all, was not just to create a retail identity, but to build a brand that has a positive impact on the bottom line.

www.lippincottmercer.com
RECOMMENDED READING
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, by Paco Underhill (Texere Publishing)

BRAND Sense: Build Powerful Brands Through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound, by Martin Lindstrom (Free Press)

Sense: The Art and Science of Creating Lasting Brands, by Lippincott Mercer (Rockport Publishers)