Brands are luring customers back into stores with personalised experiences driven by technology
Homes often represent one’s personality. For most people, they denote comfort and a safe space to unwind and that’s why interiors and decor choices matter. We see manufacturers today clubbing utility with comfort, pleasure and aesthetics.
After being largely unorganised for the longest number of years, the home improvement market is getting increasingly organised with new players stepping in. This makes the industry more appealing to customers, who are already growing more and more zealous about aesthetics.
Rise of experiential shopping
A trend that is emerging is experiential shopping, reintegrating personalisation into the industry.
Setting up spaces like ‘inspire-centers’ accentuates touch and feel-led shopping with a vast portfolio of interior products. It encourages customers to adopt new looks and experiment with different choices and styles for their homes. It also helps educate customers on the products, including material, quality control tests and limits or capacity.
A seamless experience today entails an omnichannel route built with physical and online touchpoints. These phygital measures are being prioritized to meet customer requirements and expose them to a more intriguing and interactive experience.
What the future entails
The Indian interior design industry is expanding by the year and is anticipated to mushroom tremendously over the coming years. As per a report by Indian Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), the projected numbers of the vertical reflect a market size of US$ 81.2 billion by the year 2030, growing at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 14.3%.
With India evolving artistically in the interior design and home segment, it makes sense to offer audiences an opportunity to feel the texture of the furniture, wall panels, the couch and much more, getting the focus back to physical footfall in the store.
Brands are massively driving this vision by focusing on offline studios for interior and design consultation. Some of the aspects that are coming into play prominently, include:
Focus on sustainability: The Indian demographic is also leaning towards eco-friendly alternatives as they understand the need of the hour. Customers are inclined to shop from brands that sell ethically-sourced, sustainable materials and ideas. By creating spaces in offline studios that exhibit this green side of themselves, brands are pacing towards intensifying the experiential shopping experience by a notch.
AR + VR = Cr: This stands for Augmented Reality + Virtual Reality = Credit (Scored by brands that are now major contributors to the success of the Indian interior and home decor landscape). Inculcating augmented reality simulations where customers can see their choice of furniture or interiors being replicated in the setting of their homes is a big trend. The ability to visualise concepts in real-time is pulling people to offline studios, where they can see simulations of their furniture and décor choices in their homes before making the final purchase.
These measures are empowering brands to trigger a loyal callback as customers psychologically lean on habit formation of experiencing their vision in person in the store.
Brands understand that only an immersive experience while standardising the process of skimming through a zillion home and decor ideas to finalise one, can ascend the industry to its next big high.
With this shift, the segment is only going to get more organised, aesthetic, authentic and interactive.
