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Andy House Creative Director

Retail Psychology: making experiences memorable

LIGHT

Emotions drive our decisions and, at the core, are what make us human. As we navigate the world, our brains develop complex responses – emotions – around what we perceive. Emotional design maverick Don Norman puts it: “while the brain’s cognitive functions help humans understand the world, the emotional functions interpret the world: how we act, communicate, and survive”. When faced with a retail experience, our brain begins responding with subjective emotional responses, kickstarting perceptions for how we feel on our journey to purchase.
 
 
This is where we have the exciting opportunity to inject stimuli to create lasting memories. Our goal in retail design is to understand the ways our clients and customers will perceive and interpret their surroundings, then predict how they will emotionally respond to them.

Be memorable through surprise & delight.
 
 
Our decisions are directly linked to our emotions. Even what we consider “logical reasoning” requires emotion. Strong emotions have an overwhelming impact on what we store in our brain. In physical retail moments, what we remember is what we take away from our experiences, and, in turn, we make most of our decisions in terms of our memories.

How do we connect emotions to making memories and purchases?

Our recollection is also reconstructed every time we conjure it. This means that highlight moments, like peaks and valleys, disproportionately dominate memory; decisions can then change during subsequent events. To accentuate this point, what we remember is highly impacted by surprise and delight. Pioneering social psychologist Robert Zajonc found that “mere exposure” to unfamiliar things — from random shapes to foreign characters — can increase someone’s favorability toward them. So, more surprise leads to more memorable brand impression and experiences.
 
 
At Landor & Fitch, [we strongly believe that designing seamless, friction-free journeys are actually a poor investment](https://landorandfitch.com/en/articles/thinking/brands-should-strive-for-memorable-not-seamless). Brands and retailers should focus on being memorable to the consumer.

The same channels that our brain uses to collect sensory information from stimuli - creating perceptions and understanding of an experience - are the same centers that create the fabrics of memories. It’s also important to know that designing for one sense can have an unexpected effect on another. For instance, visual attention is improved when noise level is reduced; natural light produces significant improvements on our physiology; learning is improved when it impacts more than one sense; printed materials evoke more brain activity. Interestingly, the sense of smell and emotion are stored as one memory in the brain, making it the most important part to emotional decision-making in retail.

Entertain the senses.

Magic happens and memories are made when brand expression electrifies multiple senses. As we continue to evolve physical retail, it is our duty to harness the power of brand-led touchpoints for customers, allowing them to engage their senses and learn visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically. Once this is accomplished, we must guide customers to the most comfortable or familiar way for them to share out their retail and brand experiences. Science shows that when we speak about our emotions and not suppress what bothers us about the experiences we’ve had, it creates more happiness, effectively diminishing negative mindsets. This means everything to brands and retailers as they strive to build customer trust and loyalty.

With the addition of the [M&M’S Cafe in their Berlin flagship](https://landorandfitch.com/en/case-study/m-and-m-s), customers’ senses ignite with the taste and smell of chocolate from anywhere in the store.
 
 
Considering the points above, let’s utilize our innate neuro make-up to build impressions on customer decision-making by creating experiences that emotionally connect, imprint lasting memories, and provoke those to share with purpose.