Managing the Customer Experience within the Town Centre Retail

This chapter offers a specific point of view on the Town Centre retail, in order to develop a new way to enhance the customer retail experience in this place. The combination of shopping over the Internet and the interactive technologies represents for Town Centre retailers one of the possible solutions in the creation of a multisensory experience for people living in and visiting this urban area. By welcoming the challenge of creating multisensory experiences, “bricks and mortar” stores need to integrate digital solutions to create and handle experiences. Customers can interact with people and contents via digital technologies such as Quick Response, Electrochromic Glass, Touch Systems, Outdoor Totems, Holographic Technology, and Augmented Reality. From the analysis of the academic literature emerges an agreement that the use of the Internet and interactive technologies are not totally exploited as tools able to revitalize the Town Centre retail and create animated, lively streets that offer multisensory experiences. Based on the above considerations, this chapter provides a theoretical model in order to create an immersive retail experience within the physical store by combining the use of the Internet to conduct shopping and the interaction with several kinds of technologies.