Designing Retail Experience in the 21st Century

Covering the period of 2001 to the present, Designing Retail Experience presents readers with a critical, cross-disciplinary perspective on retail design, bringing together scholarship from design, architecture, branding, cultural studies and social studies.

Our retail experience has changed profoundly over the past two decades, in large part due to the impact of digital technology. While the rise of smartphones and online commerce threatened to displace ’bricks and mortar’ stores, physical shopping has survived and, in some cases, thrived. Today, the most successful global brands design experiences that engage customers both within the physical store and in the digital realm, and within this book, D.J. Huppatz analyses how corporations design these experiences, how we interact with them, and how they align with broader social, cultural and economic changes.

Nine case studies reveal how some of the largest global retail chains, including Apple, Amazon, Nike, Primark, IKEA and LEGO, smaller chains such as Aesop and Gentle Monster, and virtual stores such as Shein, utilize design. Unlike in the past, such corporations consider design in a continuum that extends from architecture and interiors to product and service design, and from website and digital interactions to social media. At the intersection of design and cultural studies, this book provides a critical survey and understanding of design and retail experience in the 21st century.

D.J. Huppatz is Associate Professor, Architectural and Industrial Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Previously, he was Professor of Design History at Pratt Institute, USA. He has published widely in edited books and journals and his publications with Bloomsbury include Design: The Key Concepts (2020), Modern Asian Design (2018) and Design: Critical and Primary Sources (2016). He has also written articles for the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design and the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Asian Design.