MUJI’s Fashion Retailing (Boston Flagship Store)
MUJI is a retailer that has a mission to be eco-friendly and refuses to waste. MUJI is originated in Japan. Its distinctive oriental themes and culture shine in a special light on the American market. With the gradual expansion of the MUJI market, localization of MUJI’s business throughout the front and interior designs as well as the address of the store became the goals for the local team before entering the foreign markets. Especially in such a commercial neighborhood, backbay, the question for MUJI is how to differentiate themselves from the rest of the stores, which definitely caught my attention about MUJI retail. In this essay, I would investigate MUJI retail in the following aspects: customer traffic flow, experience, disability access, store layout and design, ambiance, lighting, fixture, highlight merchandise, signage, store maintenance,theatheric effect, department, and E-commerce.
Customer Traffic Flow
Back Bay, as a major commercial community, located in CBD. It is also the hub for public transportation, which make it popular for pedestrian, tourists, and residents, especially during the business hours. This perfect location holds a big amount of traffic volume, easy access from the subway station, where is also next to the residential area. Meanwhile, there are some disadvantages such as parking difficulties, theft, and public security. Back Bay is more like a lifestyle center where consumers can enjoy food, shopping, entertainment, and leisure.
MUJI in-store layout can be categorized as a Racetrack Layout. The main path allows 4 people to walk alongside by side. The circular storefront design encourages consumers to explore every part of the store. Because MUJI wants to maximum their store space, the paths in different sections are narrow, which prohibits many people to shop in the same area at the one time. Such storefront design might push the consumers to shop at different zones, return back to the main road, and keep transferring them to the next shopping zone or to the cashier area. The checkout counter is located in the innermost part of the MUJI shop and has the same distance as the two exits. While ensuring the efficiency of settlement, it also elongates the time customer spent in the store.
The MUJI store at Newbury is staffed with professional personnel to handle the security measures in the store. Furthermore, it has a wide-opened glass door, meeting the specifications of safety and disabilities requirements. Besides, the cashier has four counters which can make it easy for people with disabilities to make payments and to meet their shopping needs. There is service personnel in various zones, which provide timely assistance for different customers and eliminate the concerns for disabled customers to reach the high shelves. Although the aisles in the zones are relatively narrow, still can fit in a wheelchair. The design of the store shows the cares for the handicapped as the company’s social responsibility. It is also counted as a method for building a company’s reputation and public recognition because behind the 50 million disabled people, there are countless family members and friends.
The exterior of the store vs Store design
MUJI’s concept is to focus on being simple and natural. Especially from its Logo, makes them stand out from other stores on Newbury St because it has a strong contrast with the surrounding shops. When it’s sunny outside, the dark shade inside the store makes the red and white colors pop up. Although the lighting in the store is not obvious during the day, it can be seen from the external vagueness of the store furnishings, which add a mystery feeling to the entire store, so that more consumers want to enter the store to check it out.
The atmosphere in the MUJI shop is the highlight of the store. From the interior decoration of the store, the wood color is the main theme. There is no particularly active and exaggerated color in the store, giving a sense of home and a warm feeling. From an auditory point of view, soft, laid-back music would unconsciously slow down the movement of the consumers. MUJI on Newbury street, a busy commercial area. Imagining a customer, after strolling through the entire street, MUJI might be able to provide a rest area for the busy consumers with a relaxing store atmosphere. The comfortable lounge area and the bedroom-like area offer consumers a home-like experience. By looking at the pictures in the appendix, it is not difficult to notice that near the entrance, MUJI has placed an aromatherapy humidifier, so that consumers can feel the scent of the fragrance as soon as they walk in. MUJI prime their consumers with mainly palliative, not so enthusiastic, and less pungent aroma, which is used to make consumers to feel like natural home from the whole sensory system. (Visual Priming, Olfactory Priming and Auditory Priming) Through the change of the environment in the store, consumers can make associations and feel the feeling of home, they will end up wanting to add items to their home more or less.
Store Layout
Something that makes MUJI store unique is about the layout because MUJI’s internal furnishings are separated by multiple categories. Unlike the usual location characteristics, MUJI’s merchandise display usually assigns from indoor to outdoor, from family to individual. Particularly speaking, from the home appliances area (kitchen supplies, sofa tables, and chairs) to personal apparel (men’s and women’s clothing). One thing that caught me attention was that it is that women’s products are placed right next to the door. My assumption was this is because men and women have different consumption habits. For men, they are more likely to find what they want to buy directly; Instead, women like to spend more time choosing, comparing, trying-on, etc., Moreover, for the purpose of aligning with its business concept: to be eco-friendly home furnishings, women are the priority group to be targeted. Meanwhile, it is obvious to find in the clothing area, from the underwear to the clothing arrangement, MUJI not only provides consumers with differents shopping choices but also offers matching product recommendations for consumers to promote more sales effectively. Simultaneously, MUJI has adopted the Idea-Orientation Presentation, giving out matching solutions in the furniture section. When it comes to the apparel section, the method of the product presentation and matching suggestions become the main focus in the clothing area. Lastly, in the organizer or storage department, MUJI will add in makeup products in the displays, attracting female buyers to take a closer look at the products. They also subtly color-code the clothing arrangement, choosing from bright to deeper color, which makes it convenient form the customers to pick their favorite one, at the same time, making sure the whole store color theme is not disrupted with multiple colors, and the colors are coordinating with each other to provide the best customer experience.
Lighting
The lighting in the MUJI is not dazzling. They mostly implement soft lights, trying to create a comfortable atmosphere. In order not to distract the atmosphere of the entire store with the over-industrial style ceilings, the entire ceiling is painted again in black, which not only preserves the style but also does not require a lot of costs to transform the storefront. The circular spotlights highlight the commodities in each area, while the goods on the wall are equipped with reflected wall lightings, illuminating the entire retail space. The unique lighting design makes allows the DIY area more three-dimensional. The reason behind this trick is that makes the layout and colors monotonous.
There are three kinds of fixtures’ Visual Merchandising, Straight Rack, Four-way fixture, and Gondolas can be found in MUJI’s epitome. The first two fully compensate for each other’s deficiencies. Because of that, consumers can not only find their favorite styles at the first glance but also can easily find their own sizes. More importantly, implementing these fixtures can free up some space in the store. As for Gondolas, space above is often used to display suggested clothing sets. Gondolas are definitely the ideal way to address storing a small, large variety of objects because it allows the consumers to choose the right one just about arm-reach.
Signage
In order to maximize the storage capacity, but not to disrupt the unity feeling of the store, MUJI only has one locational signage for the fitting room. Although the fitting room is hidden in a small corner, MUJI uses straight-forward images and bold letters to help customers to find it. As for the wording MUJI used, they prefer to bring their consumer into a scenario (similar to lifestyle images), which also tell their customers about their intention and business concepts. Unlike the norm, the Promotional signages in MUJI are not very obvious, but MUJI has a small room that is devoted to displays all the promotional products. For example, in the apparel area, it gives consumers with different types of matching sets and suggested pieces, making the customer feel like trying clothes on at their own home.
E-Commerce
All MUJI products support online orders. Leaflets are printed in detail on the flyers, as well as the most recently promoted products and prices. The same MUJI online sales also inherit the simple and natural style. However, there is insufficient contact with the physical store on the web page, and the inventory of the physical store should be created for consumers to view. It also encourages consumers to enter the store to experience the convenience of consumers’ inquiries as to whether the items they want to purchase are out of stock.
