個案總覽

As e-commerce growth continues to surpass that of brick-and-mortar retail, temporary retail spaces, also known as pop-up shops, are becoming an important promotional strategy, especially for online retailers and service providers. Success in today's retail environment means being able to create and maintain brand communities, to generate instant and measurable hype, and to deliver personalized consumer experiences all of which can be readily achieved through a strategically placed physical business presence. In this study, a survey of retailing organizations worldwide reveals that among those that had implemented at least one pop-up shop, more than 80% considered it a success. The results also show that the primary reasons for activating pop-up shops were to create connections with current and potential customers, to increase brand awareness, to introduce a new product or brand to the marketplace, and to stage a new product or brand. While the respondents deemed revenue generated at pop-up shops important, they considered improving market visibility (e.g., through social media, website traffic, or media coverage) a more significant objective. Given the economic potential of pop-up shops, this research provides retailing organizations with guiding principles for developing and operating successful pop-up shops in the current marketplace.

Although many articles discuss customer journey mapping (CJM), both academics and practitioners still question the best ways to model the consumer decision journey. We contend that most customer journey maps are critically flawed. They assume all customers of a particular organization experience the same organizational touchpoints and view these touchpoints as equally important. Furthermore, management lacks an understanding of how to use CJM as a cross-functional, strategic tool that promotes service innovation. This article proposes a solution to the unwieldy complexity of CJM by linking customer research to the CJM process and by showing managers how to develop a customer journey map that improves a customer's experience at each touchpoint. Using the case of an actual retail mall, we show that common CJM assumptions about the equal importance of all touchpoints are fundamentally wrong, and how easy it is for retail managers and strategic planners to make incorrect judgements about customer experience. This article demonstrates through a case study how customer research helped a mall's strategic management team understand which touchpoints were more or less critical to customer experience. It also shows key strategic initiatives at each touchpoint, resulting in cross-functional input aimed to advance service innovation at the mall.