Franchising, it needs a Beastly Phygital!

There is a song by a famous Italian singer Luca Carbone where he sang: “It takes a beastly physique to do whatever you want…”? Well, just like the singer-songwriter from Bologna, I loudly proclaim that every franchising network should equip itself with an investment plan to implement phygital strategies in order to compete and innovate.

The fact that e-commerce is contributing to the crisis of physical stores is a given, there’s little debate about it. Yet, we should ask ourselves if retail stores are doing enough to counteract the dominance of online shopping and meet the needs and expectations of today’s consumers.

To this question, we consumers can easily answer by asking ourselves when was the last time we entered a store and experienced any form of emotion or a memorable experience. Indeed, words like emotions, experiences, and storytelling are the keys to understanding a phenomenon that has been the lifeline for those who want to save physical retail stores from closure for several years now.

It’s called phygital and it’s composed of the fusion of two terms: physical and digital, a neologism that explains the need, in today’s world, to find forms of interaction between the physical and digital worlds, and a store becomes the perfect space to stage this marriage.

Phygital, a concept that emerged in 2014

Before showing you concrete cases of how many brands are internalizing the concept of phygital within their marketing strategies, let me briefly go over the history of phygital, which originated as a concept in 2014 within the American chain Lowe’s, which announced the introduction of some robots that helped customers in their purchases, called OSHbots.

From this first experience, we can draw out the concepts around which the digital concept revolves: impactful technology, speed in service delivery, immersion to make the user the protagonist of the brand’s story, and finally, interaction between emotional sphere and brand-related technology during the purchasing phase.

Cold rooms and magic mirrors

There would be several phygital experiences that some brands have launched, but some have struck my imagination more than others. For example, Feltrinelli, in one of its stores in Piazza Piemonte in Milan, launched a real “journey” that the customer can undertake within the store: here, they can watch videos of the brand’s booksellers reviewing books on totems, with the possibility of contacting them for tailor-made consultations via WhatsApp. In addition, the brand has equipped its stores with QR code scanning technologies, through which customers can purchase with their smartphones without going through the checkout.

When it comes to phygital, another notable experience is that of the Rebecca Minkoff brand, which, in its stores in New York, has installed digital dressing rooms containing a mirror with which customers can interact. They can view, for example, photos of clothes, watch fashion shows, and communicate with a stylist directly from the fitting room to get advice on matching accessories.

The Woolrich brand in Milan also did not lack imagination, as in its flagship store, it installed cold rooms with a temperature of around -20 degrees Celsius, complete with artificial snow, to allow its customers to test a jacket, immersing them in one of the situations they could face in real life.

Omnichannel and empathy

Franchising networks today have a great opportunity with customers who, despite understanding the advantages of online shopping, dream of increasingly “human” shopping experiences, away from the chaos of connections and data.

Therefore, offering innovative technologies, developing touchpoints that allow customers to seamlessly transition from physical to digital channels (the so-called omnichannel), and empathy are the paths to follow to save stores, even neighborhood ones, from the competition of global e-commerce giants and thus create value.