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AT&T RETAIL SPACE
As a team of three graduate students from IIT Institute of Design, we conducted a seven-week research project on retailing experiences. After visiting several retail stores, we decided to take AT&T flagship on Michigan Ave as a case study to investigate. AT&T is a mobile service provider that is also ambitious about being a leader in technology innovation and customer experiences. But from our observation, we think that there are still spaces for AT&T to improve to align their business goals with their actual physical stores.
Key words: primary research, research report, models, research analysis, observation, shadowing, interviews, behavioral mapping
DATA COLLECTION
The data we collected includes secondary research data, such as market trends of retail stores, usage of emerging technologies in retail spaces, social behaviors in retail spaces, changing behaviors of customers, theories about good experience and environment of retail spaces, AT&T’s vision and strategy, etc.
We also collected primary data on the field, including observation data from 10 retail stores on Michigan Ave, which is organized by AEIOU, observation data from shadowing participants, interview data from contextual inquiry and also after observation, interview data from intercepting 3 personnels in AT&T, mapping data which is collected from observing customers’ behaviors in AT&T flagship in a particular period of time to reveal patterns in the store, and also quantitative data about customers location, number, moving patterns.
SHADOWING INTERVIEWEES IN THE STORE
SPATIO-TEMPORAL MAPPING
THREE MODELS FROM RESEARCH
After collecting data by various methods, we organized the data into three themes based on different scale from strategic level to implement level: perception vs reality, in-store shopping experience, and interaction in the store. The first theme focusing on finding the gap between the new AT&T brand value and customer’s perception about the new AT&T brand. The second aims at finding better practice to convey the new brand and services concepts to the customers. And the third theme deals with the issues while customers interacting with the environment, devices and people in the store. We think those themes are important for AT&T to investigate and invest if they want to achieve their business objectives. We will talk about them in details in the following sessions.
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