The Retail Design Paradigm and its Correlation with Neuroscience

Neuroscience utilises technology to measure the brain’s response to stimuli, providing consumer researchers insight into the fundamental neural processes that drive consumer behaviour. As such, the research outcomes from consumer neuroscience can be of significant value to retailers.

Regardless, neuroscience remains unknown and under-utilised in a retail design context, despite evidence showing effective retail design can contribute significantly to the brands’ financial performance. Therefore, it could be inferred that there must exist an incidental correlation between the neural design preferences of consumers established in a research context, and the retail design of highly successful brands in a real-world context.

This was posed as a research question. To answer it, and develop a theoretical conclusion, neuroscientific literature was reviewed to summarise the determinants of consumer preferences. As a result, several hypotheses were developed and tested on the retail design of a successful brand via visual research.

The results show that there is indeed a correlation between research outcomes and a real-world context, although more research that takes into account moderators of behaviour, consumer demographics and specific brand environments is required, this work demonstrates how the outcomes from consumer neuroscientific research can inform retail design theory and contribute to retailer success.

Kerry Anne Taylor
Master in Design Alumna 2021
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerryannetaylor