Most of my primary research, I am carrying over from my unit 12 specialist study project as it is the same research that relates to my unit 13 work. During my specialist study project, I went to Bluewater shopping centre, Maidstone shopping centre and Chatham shopping centre and I looked at how Lush which relates to my project now, is laid out and displayed, but also how other shops display their products in different ways.
Lush and Body Shop relate more to my business, but the other shops I have photographed are interesting to analyse because they are laid out completely different to suite a different target audience.
Shown below are the physical shops related to my business:
The Body Shop
I have looked at the body shop to relate to my business, I found the layout to be coordinated, minimal and subtle in colours, which suggest professional,elegant and high end products.
Comparing the layout to mine I am of the impression that the target audience is slightly older females and relate to more professional individuals on a higher budget.
I have learned that although the products are quite similar there is a change in layout, colouring and display which caters for a slightly different target audience.
I feel I should bear this in mind as I do like the professional look of the body shop and going forward would like to take inspiration from this to enhance my business.
Boots
Boots I found to be quite interesting to analyse, as the core of the shop i feel is based around the chemist it branches out to incorporate a wide range of products.
They advertise and make huge impact on savings, this is done by a loyalty card of which this is great food for thought as this would be something I most definitely would be interested in adding to the business.
There is a great satisfying feeling to have customers who regularly shop with you, and means product,price and satisfaction are achieved, rewarding these customers is a great inscentive.
Big bold signs is a good feature in this shop which directs customers to where they want to be thus saving time which reduces the risk of customers going else where.
I feel the boots offers are extremely successful and clever so this inspires me to think about adding similar techniques to the business.
Lush
Lush has got to be the most inspirational shop,not only is it the most simular regarding products it also has the same enviroment friendly attitude as we are trying to achieve.
With no testing on animals policy and natural enviroment friendly ingridients it sends the important message of looking after our planet to the young target audience, who will be our next generation.
Lush shop is a cavern of exciting colours and fragrances that hits you as soon as you walk in.
This we have tried to capture on the stall, stacking plenty to see and smell in glorious colours hits the young target audience.
We like lush have tried to encorpreate wood and natural trays and suroundings as to blend in and enhance the natural theme of the products.
The feedback I have received is mainly positive on these points especially with natural ingredients and environmently friendly.
Negative feedback was the signs and information on the stall,making it look more amature, of which I totally agree and aim to change in the future.
The feedback which also interested me was the pricing, after doing research around this I came to the conclusion that over expensive ranges are not tailored to the target audience so must be highly thought out,especially being we are new to this market and not yet fully established as in Lush branding sells its self.
Shown below are physical shops that cater for a different target audience in comparison to my business:
Lego
Lego has a simular target audience in age but aims more towards the males, like Lush it packs bright colourful products into spaces to capture the young imaginations.
Not to much is emphasised on looking coordinated as this does not matter, again the branding is the main seller.
I like how Lego has incorparated the fun element in the shop which gives a unique selling strategy which separates hands on selling to online selling.
This is something I feel I need to look at in great depth as this, I feel is key to becoming a success.
Foot Locker
Research into footlocker has been interesting, although products are completely different and nothing, on face value seems to be the same, I believe the connection lays with the new, fashionable products which are currant and highly sort after, this to me is a key factor which needs to be investigated on a regular basis.
Footlocker is fashionable,currant and on trend which looks at the younger target audience, maybe not as young as ours.
My research shows that one of there aims is to stock a variety of choice of on trend items which is something we can certainly learn from in the future.
CONCLUSION
On concluding my primary research I have looked at other companies products,layouts and retail stratergies.
I have learned different techniques in display,colours and products for different target audiences.
I have looked at the different creative ways of displaying and selling products and why these stratergies work.
As these successful business differ from mine and noticed changes that can be made in order to be more professional and successful.
I have looked at feedback closely from tutors and peers and tried to take on board useful tips and changes that hopefully will make a difference.
I feel this experience has taught me about the thought process behind how a business becomes successful and how small things make all the difference, so not to rush into business to get opinions, feedback and do a lot of research.
Questionnaires
During the half way point of my project, I decided to make a sheet on word with two images on. The image at the top is the edited version of my final image and the image at the bottom of my page is the original version of the image. I began looking for peers in my class including my tutors to decide which image they think looked best. Either the edited version of the image or the non-edited version. I was debating whether or not the images I had done was too over edited where they look worse than they originally did. Therefore I gained various other opinions from my peers aged 17-20. I asked people within this age group as I get a lot of young people at my boot fair stalls around this age. This is the most likely add to be following the business on social media also.
It is clear to see that the edited version of the final image was the most favourite as it had tally'd up to 17 compared to the two who voted the original image.
Again for this questionnaire, it is clear to see that the edited version of the image as far more favourable as it has been tally'd up to 14 rather than 6. This was a pretty close score tho so maybe this image may have looked better with a darker background.
For this questionnaire shown above, I wanted to collate information about whether the 30 peers that I had asked, believe my project is attainable and interesting. I did not end up having time to do pie chart analysis on this information unfortunately which is what I will do for my projects in the future, however, I still have collected information that I can feed forward into my project.
For the first question, every one of my answers apart from 4, had said that my project is realistic and it is achievable if I plan well.
For my second question, the very few people that did answer it, just said to make sure I have a big bulk of research looking into physical and online shops which I will definitely do.
For my third question, the majority of the answers said that they had really liked my test shoots and images. Some people preferred my later shoots rather than my first shoots due to me clearly being more experienced with the camera and settings.
All of my responses for my forth question had said my images look professional and trust worthy and some even said they was industry worthy.
Most people had said my business Instagram page looks good because of the amount of posts I have on their, however, I could use hashtags which promote the posts more or I could pay and boost the posts so more people see it.
People like how the background and colours of the website are neutral and not over powering as it uses pastel colours. They don't like they're not being a logo shown there tho.
People had said that the Facebook page looks professional also although the most earliest posts look like they have been taken from a phone which does not look professional or trust worthy. I shall improve this in the future.
Every one of my peers had said that they will remember the business from business cards due to it being stuck inside their pursue where they will go everyday.
For other references and research, some people had said to research Lush, The Body Shop, Boots which sells cosmetics, and maybe New Look or Primark which may sell the odd bath bomb. I could write how it is better to have a big and multiple choice to sell bath bombs rather than the odd one in a clothing shop which does not make too much sense.
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