Retail Displays That Move: The Rise of Kinetic Fixtures in the Retail World

Retail is changing drastically and knowing trends are on the market to catch the finger of the modern purchaser. And one such trend is the rise of kinetic fixtures, or retail display fixtures that are designed with movement to inspire active, interactive customer engagement. Through the combination of art, technology and functionality, these innovative retail displays are changing the look of traditional in store design with memorable experiences that inspire shoppers.

Kinetic fixtures are an innovative, cutting edge approach to retail display design that uses movement to draw the eye, communicate a brand message, and foster an interaction with the viewer. Kinetic fixtures present a novel way to blend movement and technology into the retail shopping experience that retailers are now working to create a more realistic experience for customers. In this article, we’ll look at the emergence of kinetic fixtures in retail, how they work, and the benefits for building a captivating store that increases sales.

What Are Kinetic Fixtures?

Retail displays with a form of kinetic motion either through mechanical, motorized or digital, are known as kinetic fixtures. The fixtures those customer touch can be simple: rotating shelves, moving mannequins, or digital screens that change based on the customer’s interactions. The aim of these dynamic displays is first and foremost to get the customer engaged — through an experience that is visually stimulating and memorable.

Kinetic fixtures are unlike static displays which are holding the products in place, instead they create this feeling of energy in the store. It can be as subtle as a rotating display which changes the position of products in slow motion, or as extreme as installing larger displays with flashing lights and video projections. This motion takes shoppers’ attention away from the usual distractions of the store and instills confidence that a shopper will stop, observe, and engage with the advertised products.

Kinetic Fixtures: A Role in the Enhancement of Customer Experience

For retail, creating a memorable experience is the key to draw new customers and retain them. Providing something beyond the ordinary is what kinetic fixtures are particularly good at helping to achieve. Moving retail displays offer a particular type of sensory engagement that can engage customer’s attention and entice them to investigate a product. Here’s how these dynamic displays enhance the customer experience:

1. Capturing Attention: Capturing attention in a busy retail environment is a powerful thing and movement is a great tool. Displayed that walk put in their own little bit of life to such inanimate displays beside them, making them much more likely to catch the eye of customers. A rotating display, a mannequin that shifts position, a digital screen that changes depending on the customer’s proximity … these kinetic elements bring life to a dead zone of traditional store fixtures and break the tedium.
2. Encouraging Interaction: The kinetic displays invite the customers to engage with them. These fixtures are new additions to the world of touch responsive screens to motion activated displays, making the shopping experience more interactive. It’s definitely more interesting (to me) shopping in a display that interacts with your movements or gestures, particularly making additional product information available or revealing complementary items.
3. Enhancing Brand Storytelling: Kinetic are powerful tools for brand storytelling for retailers. The movement can help communicate messages, or call attention to something special with a product. Say a clothing store uses moving mannequins to show how an article of clothing drapes; a tech retailer could show the capabilities of an item in real time with a dynamic display that shows how it works.
4. Creating a Memorable Shopping Experience: In the experience driven retail world today, customers are searching for more than just products, they are looking for an experience. Kinetic fixtures can turn a simple shopping trip into something memorable, and that’s a good thing. Speaking from experience, shoppers are more likely to share their experiences with other people, whether it's the social media or word of mouth, which can translate in turn to visibility of the brand and traffic influx.

Kinetic Fixtures and How They Drive Sales

Capturing attention and engaging customers in the process is complete by way of kinetic fixtures and significantly impacts sales. In retail ‘active displays’, as they are marketed, that allow people to interact with an item and encourage impulse buy, have the potential to drive higher conversion rates. Here are several ways in which kinetic fixtures help boost sales:

1. Highlighting Featured Products: In retail, kinetic fixtures can highlight certain products that retailers wish to highlight, seasonal products for instance, new arrivals or high margin products. A rotating display or moving shelf can keep a product in view and the customer’s eye will return to it over and over during their store visit. Higher visibility to your products can boost sales, especially for strategic products sitting in kinetic fixtures.
2. Increasing Dwell Time: The longer customers are with a store display, the more likely they are to purchase. Inclined to linger longer because of fascination drawn to movement: they want to see how the display develops. An increased dwell time can be a crucial factor of sending conversions through the roof, due to the fact that this gives the customer more time to think about their purchase.
3. Driving Impulse Purchases: Retail does on occasion benefit from movement in the displays, it sparks curiosity and can lead to impulse buying. So, for instance, retailers can use this to showcase products in a more unexpected or interactive way to get the customer to want to actually buy, even though they were probably not in the market for that specific item. This is especially effective because you can use the movement around the offer while the offer lasts.
4. Encouraging Product Discovery: Akin to a poster convention at a trade show or in a mall, kinetic displays are made to display many products, highlighting anything from complementary or cross sell items a customer might not have seen. For example, a rotating display might make products appearing and disappearing in and out of view; allowing customers to find items that perhaps they never knew they had.

Kinetic fixtures in retail and the future.

Kinetic fixtures are also set to have an ever more important role to play within the evolution of the changes brought about by the retail landscape. So with tech advancement such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and interactive digital displays, retail displays that move are not only becoming more sophisticated, but are also becoming more versatile.

Because future kinetic fixtures may include even more integration with digital technology, customers will be able to move about or choose products and have them interact with the fixture in real time, while receiving personalized recommendations. Artificial intelligence integration could allow the displays to customizing based to customer preferences so that we have a personalized shopping experience that satisfies the customer and eventually drives the behavior of the customer to be loyal to the brand.

Innovative Kinetic Fixtures in Retail

Examples

Several retailers are off to the races when it comes to using kinetic fixtures in store designs. As just one example, fashion retailer Nike has employed moving mannequins at their stores to demonstrate the latest apparel in action, with the goods moving around while life-size mannequins provide a dynamically realistic style of what the outfit looks and feels like on. Tech stores however, including Apple, are moving towards interactive displays that change in response to customer interaction, helping customers better understand their products and to engage with them in a more hands on way.

Brands in the beauty industry have adopted kinetic displays like L’Oreal which use movement and lighting effects to display features of their products in an immersive, engaging way for those in the beauty industry.

Conclusion

In deploying movement into retail store displays, kinetic fixtures are presenting an experience that enthralls and connects with customers. Combining art, technology, and sales functionality, these are not visually appealing only, but they also support to increase the brand’s visibility; improve sales; and improve customer satisfaction. Kinetic fixtures will be an increasingly key player driving what the future of retail will be. If you want brands to stand apart in a choppy marketplace, there’s no better way than to invest in retail displays that move, to make their store environments live, memorable, and sales-driving.