Experiential Retail

“People don’t buy products and services per se, they buy relationships, happiness, wellbeing and other psychologically oriented needs and wants. Make emotion central to your retail strategy.”

— Doug Stephens, Retail Futurist and Founder of Retail Prophet.

Thoughtfully designed encounters

Shoppers expect to be able to shop and buy when, where, and how they choose. As differentiating and acquiring customers online becomes more costly and competitive, the physical store experience can become a key mobilizer of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Avida is a strategic human-centred design company based in Toronto, Canada.
Avida helps retailers establish the vision for elevated shopping experiences.

Show some love with great experiences

Shoppers still want to shop in stores and for those that make the effort, they should be rewarded with great experiences.

We believe that customer experience is a love language and physical stores have an important role to play in increasing the level of happiness in your customers. From great staff interactions to immersive storytelling, exploratory interactives, and unique sensory experiences, you can turn your store into an expression of love and care.

Retail experience programs:
A comprehensive approach

The design of brick-and-mortar experiences is a complex endeavor that requires the input of many stakeholders. The key is to develop a clear vision and concept for the store experience, with clearly articulated business and customer experience objectives.

We develop retail experience programs that aligns stakeholders and helps clarify and translate organizational priorities to design teams. We then execute on all design elements holistically to ensure each touchpoint across the customer journey is mutually supportive and ladders back up to the broader brand vision.

Avida helps retailers establish the vision for elevated shopping experiences.

A multi-dimensional approach to experience design

Avida’s 8-Dimensions of Planning is a comprehensive methodology used for designing experiences for digitally integrated brick-and-mortar environments.

We apply this methodology to develop retail experiences that ensure business and end-customer needs are balanced.

Explore the 8 Dimensions

  • Brand

  • Story

  • Service

  • Product

  • Technology

  • Spatial

  • Temporal

  • Aesthetic

Brand Dimension
Key to ensuring brand integrity and consistency across customer touchpoints.

Story Dimension
Key to ensuring a conceptually cohesive experience and enabling effective storytelling and content planning.

Service Dimension
Key to ensuring experiences are operationally responsible and support service delivery models.

Product Dimension
Key to designing relevant experiences for high-involvement and low-involvement product categories.

Technology Dimension
Key to ensuring optimal technology integration, efficient network-wide operations, and effective service, maintenance, and support.

Spatial Dimension
Key to planning experiences that scale across different store concepts, formats, and sizes.

Temporal Dimension
Key to setting experiential priorities across touchpoints, and determining message durations, sequences, and frequencies.

Aesthetic Dimension
Key to ensuring the right mix of sensory stimuli for desired emotional and affective impacts.

Avida xLab drives research and development into sensory exeprience design
Avida xLab drives research and development into sensory exeprience design
Avida xLab drives research and development into sensory exeprience design

Avida xlab & innovation through human-centred design

As humans, we perceive the world through our senses. This impacts how we feel, think, and behave. Recognizing this, Avida conducts sensory experience design research and development through its innovation lab — xlab.

Xlab is a creative space dedicated to the advancement of applied research and design for the senses. We’re driven by the belief that we can create better, more memorable, and meaningful experiences when we approach human-centred design by prioritizing sensory perception, affect, and emotion.

“The road to emotion runs through our sensory experiences…emotion is one of the most powerful forces in driving what we buy.”

— Martin Lindstrom, Author of Buyology.

Learn More about xlab

Learn more about our approach to experiential retail, our capabilities, and what sensory experiences we’re developing at xlab.

Contact Avida