Page 33 - DMGT552_VISUAL_MERCHANDISING

Visual Merchandising

Notes
Figure 2.2: Display Theme

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:

7. The main goal of display is to showcase the products within the overall display area.
8. Customers give three to five seconds of their attention to window display.
9. The retailers’ visual message should be conveyed to the customer in that short period of
time.
10. A bad theme will lure the customer with a shopping mood into the store.
11. Themes mainly are independent to retailers’ imagination and creativity.
12. Focusing on the right theme rather than creating a display with expensive raw materials
is the key to successful window display.
13. A shoe store theme can be a group of elves buying shoes.

2.3 History and Evolution of Visual Merchandising

Visual Merchandising has been around since the dawn of civilisation, since humans started
selling merchandise to a customer. When a vendor arranged his goods to be more attractive for
a customer, or when a farmer put the biggest and ripest apples on top of the basket for consumers
to see and touch, that is visual merchandising.
When the giant nineteenth century dry goods establishments like Marshall Field & Co. shifted
their business from wholesale to retail, the visual display of goods became necessary to attract
the general consumers. The store windows were often used to attractively display the store’s
merchandise. Over time, the design aesthetic used in window displays moved indoors and
became part of the overall interior store design, eventually reducing the use of display windows
in many suburban malls. In the twentieth century, well-known artists such as Salvador Dalí and
Andy Warhol created window displays.
As the 20th century ended, and the new millennium was entered, retailers were concerned with
competition more than ever before. One of the ways in which merchants of every product
classification, both large and small, helped to distinguish themselves from the others in the

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