smart mirror

Over the past ten years the Pop Up Store concept has developed from a niche concept into a widely used marketing tool for a multitude of businesses with a multitude of purposes.
As a marketing research tool the pop up is very useful for main stream businesses to test and explore new products and ideas. Also functioning as a method for existing businesses to grow their brand awareness and increase sales.
Amazon recently launched a pop up in Sacramento at the end of October 2014 for the holiday season. Primarily this is functioning as a marketing tool to allow customers to interact with their products, however it is also most likely a test bed as a distribution channel.

As most retail sales during the Christmas and Holiday season still come from bricks and mortar stores there is an obvious benefit for Amazon and other online retailers to find cost effective ways to tap into this engaged customer and profitable channel during this season.
Pop ups by nature are low risk and low cost as temporary, short term retail spaces. In addition to testing, research, brand awareness and sales, pop ups are also be used for product launches, sample sales and for experimental and experiential marketing. A recent study carried out by Pop Up Republic discovered that 61% of the shoppers surveyed go to pop up shops to find seasonal products.

Around 39% were looking for unique products and services and 36% wanted to support local enterprises.
A recent campaign by Coach focused on raising awareness of the brands’ new clothing range to their Australian customers. A number of Pop-Ups were set up in central locations in high profile shopping centres in Melbourne and Sydney during spring 2014.

As part of this campaign, the Gesaky Mirror was utilized as both an experiential shopping experience and also as a data capture tool for the brand. This type of cross purpose functionality is what makes the Pop Up such an attractive tool for retailers.

For more articles exploring multi-channel marketing in retail click here or go to our infographic here exploring a recent report into expectations of a multi channel customer.