Experience Centers vs.Traditional Retail stores

Statistics suggest that E-commerce is growing 3x faster than traditional retail.

While 51% of consumers prefer to shop online, 49% would rather go to a store.

To most of us, this picture might indicate that the brick and mortar stores are

spiraling down and sooner or later reach the endgame.

Indeed the Marketplace is going under a complete transformation but is this

an end to Brick and mortar?

Well, to a lot of you the answer to this question might seem pretty simple. But

today I am here to give this subject a different perspective. A perspective of

feel-touch-know, and buy. Yes, you heard it right, an experience store.

2017 turned out to be the worst year on record for traditional retail stores. More

than 6,700 stores announced closures. By the end of 2017, the number raised

up to 6,985. Online retailers have been replacing the brick and mortar stores

for a while now. And to add to it, the pandemic has shut down businesses and

traditional retail stores to a great extent. By now we know, that the trend will

continue through 2020.

In the age where top e-retailers like Amazon are enabling people to purchase

products with a tap of a button, for the brick-and-mortar retailers stepping up

their game has become the need of the hour. The only solution to this is to

offer people experiences that they can’t get online or while scrolling through

their phones.

With that very thought began the idea of experience stores. By the end of last

year, Samsung announced to open its first Bay Area Samsung Experience

Store in the heart of Silicon Valley. Sources quote that this fourth US store will

be an "everything" hub to tie in customer service and tech support with

Samsung's vast empire of gadgets as the world's biggest phone and TV

maker.