Few things are more important to stores than their displays and product staging areas. This is most noticeable when walking along city streets or through well-decorated malls.The settings that retailers create are getting more and more elaborate and emphasize attributes and ideals of products which they are trying to sell.
More than anything stores want to embody the lifestyles their products are supposed to give people. They have to put up an ideal and create an image that people want to see themselves as a part of. In the summer, beach scenes are particularly noticeable and make it easy to imagine perfect family beach days with a cooler, umbrella and all the items required to outfit a group for the beach.
The storefront window is likely the inspiration behind all types of retailing advertisement. Magazine images, electronic ads, and tv commercials all try to stage some kind of ideal, similar to storefront windows. Old Navy even took it a step further and made manequins, the primary means of displaying their product in the windows, into the main characters of the television and print advertising.
This also goes back to the reading that we discussed about media being the message. Setting up something physical and three dimensional drastically changes how people interact with it. Old Navy tries to bring this into their television advertising with some success but makes it more of a character situation than a setting. The setting is the emphasized part of store windows to try to make certain aspects of that setting appeal to consumers.
Hmm. I like the idea. However I keep pondering over the idea that the window is a medium. And what we see through it is another medium. I think you raise some interesting points, Should talk about it some more.
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