Page 74 - DMGT552_VISUAL_MERCHANDISING

Unit 4: Store Exteriors and Interiors

The quality of a store front is a major determinant for a customer, particularly a new customer, Notes
and should not be underestimated. The exterior appearance of one store, a block of businesses or
a cluster, silently announces what customers can expect inside. Good exterior visual merchandising
attracts attention, creates interest and invites the customer into the business. The exterior
presentation can offer a conservative, progressive, lavish, or discount image to the customer.
How a store visually welcomes customers has a lot to do with whether or not they enter the
store. Although good prices and positive word-of-mouth advertising is important, it is hard to
overcome the negative image of a poor store exterior. When examining a store’s exterior,
consider the following questions:

 How do customers locate the business?
 Are the sidewalks clean, safe and accessible?
 Are the exterior signs clean, fresh and readable?

 Does the store front need cleaning, painting or touch up?
 Are the outside entrances clean and accessible?
 Are the windows clean, bright and inviting?
 Are the window display preparation materials such as tape, pins and packaging materials
removed?
 Are the window displays frequently changed?
 Do the window displays carry a theme?
Even with the perfect floor plan, it’s important to note that Visual Merchandising begins even
before the customer enters your front door. Stand outside your front door—are your windows
a good representation of what the customer will find inside? Once a group of women were sent
into what we considered to be a beautifully merchandised store. They were asked to take a look
around and report back on what they saw. We anticipated that we would hear only good things.
Boy, were we wrong. One woman was particularly annoyed by the dead flies she saw in the
front window. Now, dead bugs in your windows are a fact of life— every store window in the
world has a few—but this woman equated the fly carcasses to poor attention to detail. She felt
that if the store didn’t sweat the small stuff, then it probably wouldn’t go the extra mile for its
customers. We thought that was a stretch, yet we couldn’t disagree, because this was her opinion—
her perception—and perception is what counts with customers. Front windows must be clean,
uncluttered, and have a simple message. They are not meant to be an historical museum of signs
for community events that have already taken place. Customers will typically take just a five
second glance at what’s in your windows, so if yours are filled with complicated displays, or too
many signs, then most customers will never see your message.

Three other important functional aspects of exterior design are customer visibility, store security,
and potential for efficiency among staff and associates.
A variety of approaches to store exteriors are available to retailers. Modular or prefabricated
structures are pre-manufactured, fitted with electrical and plumbing fixtures, and transported to
be secured on a slab or attached to other units. These buildings are most commonly found in a
self-service format, such as a convenience store. Chain store companies with freestanding stores
may use uniform prototypes of different sizes, each having standard specifications, to achieve
cost advantages through mass production.
Retailers entering shopping malls often find that the developers establish the rules for storefront
design to ensure overall image consistency. An exterior design may be subject to the approval
of many agencies, including zoning boards, fine arts commissions, and residents’ associations as

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