제품의 서비스화 경향과 플래그십 스토어의 UX 터치포인트 유형 분석

Abstract

(Background and Purpose) Of all the social changes that occurred in the 21st century, the confluence of different social or professional areas arguably had the most significant impact on contemporary society. This phenomenon has also influenced marketing activities in the contemporary business environment. Previously, different industries could be neatly classified as selling either a product or a brand. In the current situation, however, there are so many products and services with “in-between” characteristics. This paper studies this tendency with a focus on products merging with service features, as well as on the concept of the “flagship” store in which a primarily product-based brand provides experiential marketing programs as a customer service. In this paper, the need to provide a holistic user experience (UX) will be discussed. As for how to render this “holistic” user experience, this paper proposes the design programming checklist. (Method) This research has been conducted using both literature reviews and case studies. For the analyses of actual flagship stores, a qualitative analysis method was adopted and the related information was gathered through literature review and field study. (Results) As the social and economic background for this tendency to merge product and service in contemporary marketing activities, this study shows that in the developed economies, the service and knowledge economy is becoming increasingly important: the core of the company’s profit creation is moving from making physical value toward formulating psychological value. Therefore, even product-based companies, which previously produced physical value, are now attempting to add service qualities to their products so that they can create new psychological values. Yet, it is not only the product brands, who are influenced by this trend: service brands are also putting considerable effort into visualizing and materializing their services so that they can provide more concrete services. This paper also addresses the new marketing paradigms underpinning this change: experiential marketing, marketing 3.0, and marketing 4.0. To produce the design programming tool for rendering holistic UX in flagship stores of a product brand, UX touch point types were analyzed: 8 types related to marketing strategy and 14 types related to users’ attributes. (Conclusions) This study concluded that in the era of market 3.0/4.0, the practice of creating flagship stores with holistic UX programs can be an efficient marketing tactic to advertise the brand’s value creation and to communicate with customers who want to satisfy self-actualization needs. It also concluded that future flagship stores need to reinforce the experiential programs to conform to the customer’s leading role and self-realization needs, which are clearly deficient in present programs, as demonstrated in this paper’s case analyses of representative Korean brands’ flagship stores.