Experiential marketing in modern retailing

In modern age, economic development is inflowing into novel stage which quits the traditional sales methods and focuses on product sales and service offering. In fierce competitive environment, it is necessary to augment consumers' emotional connections to the brand. Therefore retailers concentrate on creating impressive retail experiences, which magnetize consumers at physical as well as psychological level.

Experiential Marketing is the art and science to engage clienteles with in depth experiences of the product. It is also called live marketing engagement where there is a face to face interaction between the consumer and a product or a brand. With this marketing channel, marketers appeal to the emotional senses of the clienteles and to influence their purchase decision. Experiential retail policies create emotional attachments, which help customers to obtain a higher degree of possessive control over in-store activities. It also allows customers to involve and intermingle with the brand's products and services.

There are five strategic experiential models suggested by Schmitt to create different experiential forms for customers. These are:

1. Sensory experience: the sensory experience of customers towards experiential media such as visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile response results.

2. Emotional experience: the inner emotion and sense of customers raised by experience media.

3. Thinking experience: customers' judgements on the surprise and explanation motivated by experience media.

4. Action experience: by experience media, consumers are linked so that they can acquire social identity and belonging sense.

5. Relevance: related experience for customers through the experience of media production links, and to social recognition.

Major advantages of experiential marketing:

-      Experiential marketing is pleasurable to the consumer. If it is effectively implemented, the consumer relishes and remembers the interaction with the brand represented by the product.

-      It produces loyalty by leaving ineffaceable impressions.

Disadvantages of experiential marketing:

-      The marketers must be proficient to interact with the consumer. They must take care of all consumers, be fervent about the product, be creative in dealing with challenges and take initiative.

Experiential marketing create an unforgettable experience for the customer. This type of marketing allow brands to engage with their targeted customers in order to achieve marketing communication objectives and add value to customer’s lives.

It can be settled that experiential marketing strategies espoused by retailers are fruitful in magnetizing customers for good shopping experience. In competitive environment, excessive brand clutter pose new type of challenges to marketer therefore experimental marketing is a potent tool to address the changing customer profile.