Visual Merchandising

The elective that teaches a designer the retail craft of visual merchandising: presenting product and shaping a store so that it attracts, communicates and sells. It begins with an introduction to retailing and visual merchandising, the definition and scope and evolution of retailing, the retailing marketing mix and the role of retail in the nation's economy, the vast organised and unorganised Indian retail sector and its changing face, and the definition and functions and history of visual merchandising itself, and it clears the field's first myth from the start, that visual merchandising is just decoration, by showing that it is a strategic, psychological craft grounded in how people actually shop. It teaches the components of visual merchandising, the elements and principles applied to display, the concept of the store interior with its atmospherics of aroma and music and fixtures and display units, and the concept of the store exterior with its marquee and facade and sign boards and window displays, the focal point of the merchandise, the display theme, the colour vitals and the lighting. It teaches product and display and fixture design, the purpose and types and cost of display units, choosing the right display for the right product, display methods and techniques and composition, the importance of fixture design, point-of-purchase display, the virtual merchandising tool kit, and modular and special fixtures. It teaches store planning and the external facade and signage, the purpose and principles of store planning, the types of stores and the store selection procedure, and the store-planning concepts of the decompression zone and the arena principle and the power wall and traffic and aisle, grounded in the real behaviour of shoppers who slow in the transition zone — while treating the old 'shoppers always turn right' rationale for the power wall as the folklore it is, since controlled studies find entry turning closer to a coin-flip. And it ends in the design activities of a real retail project, designing a retail space for a brand and producing the concepts and studies and sketches and layouts and furniture and details and a rendering or model. Throughout, it holds an honest line: that atmospherics are real but not magic, that more is not more because clutter sells less, that online has expanded rather than killed visual merchandising, and above all that the best visual merchandising serves the shopper as much as the seller, and that the founder of the very 'Gruen effect' disowned the cynical, manipulative use of store design, so that a student learns to design retail spaces that are compelling and profitable and honest all at once.