The Hot Topics of EuroShop 2023

Copy & Images Source: Euroshop Trade Fair website

We have focused on the eight Hot Topics that are being featured at Euroshop 2023 and brought them together to give you an overview of what is in store at this years hottest Retail Trade Fair!

1. Sustainability

Act in a resource-saving way - for the climate and your customers

Sustainability has become a highly significant strategic issue for the entire retail industry. Many retail companies are working towards achieving carbon neutrality throughout the entire value chain. Both demand and supply for sustainable solutions are increasing enormously.

In which areas can you act sustainably?

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in all areas of activity. When shopping, customers are not the least likely to pay attention to how brands present their sustainability efforts and how they handle energy and resources. EuroShop and its exhibitors are aware of the importance of this topic and offer numerous suggestions in many areas:

• Shopfitting and exhibition stand construction
• Lighting
• Visual Merchandising
• retail technology
• Refrigeration
• Energy Management
• Food Service Equipment
• and many more

How can event appearances be made more sustainable? 

The three cooperation partners Messe Düsseldorf, IFES and fwd will be addressing this question at Euroshop 2023 in a special area of their own. Under the title "THINK SUSTAINABLE – ACT RESPONSIBLE. How to create a sustainable future in LiveCom", visitors will learn how trade show booths and trade show appearances can be designed more sustainably using best practice examples.

2. customer centricity

Know the value of your clientele and optimize the customer experience

Focus on customers and their needs. Many retail companies are seeking ever closer direct contact with the end consumer in order to offer them personalized and individualized digital customer services. The customer's smartphone plays a major role in this context.

What means do you use to focus on the clientele?

To make the best use of your digital services, you should always think "from the customer's point of view". Know your clientele, act in a way that addresses your target group and thus decide on the ideal digital solutions for the customer experience. Solutions that aim to achieve this are:

• digital consulting assistants
• personalized offers
• digital coupons
• loyalty systems
• and much more

3. vital city centres

A success factor for the future of the city centre? Brick-and-mortar retail!

The attractiveness of our retail locations is increasingly declining. The challenges lie in the growing vacancy rate, the lack of visitor frequency and the declining identification of citizens with their city. In times of accelerating digitalization, making city centers attractive and lively is one of the most important tasks for urban planners, brandeteers, and also for the high street retail sector. Physical and sustainable experiences offer an opportunity to inspire people and attract them back to the city centres.

What means do you use to attract visitors back into the cities?

For retailers, EuroShop offers all the tools they need to continue shaping a brick-and-mortar store in the interests of a vital city center.

Many experience dimensions of EuroShop, such as Retail Marketing, Retail Technology, Shopfitting, Store Design & Visual Merchandising, but also Food Service Equipment for retail gastronomy, represent offers that turn stores or shopping centers into attractive meeting places.

Within the Future Urban Lab, visitors will also have the opportunity to realize their own vision of a city of the future.

Such visions may include, for example, the following ideas:

• Offer gastronomic options.
• Use state-of-the-art technologies and digital services that make shopping an experience worth telling.
• Design your retail store in a way that makes consumers want to come back.
• Set up your premises in such a way that your customers can linger.
• Inspire your customers with events and special experiences.

4. Smart Store

Smart store concepts: shopping around the clock

The digitization of the retail industry has led to brick-and-mortar stores becoming more intelligent. Automated store concepts have become established in which the shopping process is largely digital and unmanned.

Sensor and image recognition technologies play an important role here. However, they are also used in conjunction with other applications such as "smart" shelves that monitor stock and detect out-of-stocks, electronic price tags, and intelligent scales.

What are the different smart store concepts?

• Self-checkout: Customers are responsible for scanning and paying for the goods themselves all the time.
• Scan & Go: While shopping, customers scan the goods themselves and the payment process is automatic.
• Grab & Go: Here, virtually everything is automated via sensors and image recognition software, the customer identifies himself or herself with a QR code when entering the store, selects the desired goods and leaves the store again.
• Vending machine stores: Here, the customer simply operates a touchscreen to select products. In the background, robots collect the goods.
  
  

5. connected retail

Seamless Customer Journey: Connected Retail

Retail only works online OR offline? No. "Fusion" is the magic word here. Because: Omnichannel commerce has gained another big boost from the Corona pandemic. Click & collect services have become the norm for consumers, and many retailers have merged their loyalty systems from the online and offline worlds, giving customers a 360-degree view of purchases made. The seamless connection of digital and brick-and-mortar channels will be essential for every retail company in the future.

How do I create a seamless omnichannel experience?

• How do I serve my customers personally, purposefully, and consistently across all my online and offline channels?
• How do I create a connected store where my customers get an immersive shopping experience with their mobile devices?
• Customer loyalty: What means do I use to bind my customers to my brand – online as well as in the store?
• What solutions are available to me to offer services such as personal consulting, click & collect or fulfilment digitally?

6. energy management

Keeping an eye on energy consumption and saving

In view of developments on the energy market, precise control and monitoring of energy consumption in retail stores will increasingly become a critical success factor for every retail company in the future.

Innovative and intelligent technological applications will play a decisive role in measuring a company's own energy consumption, identifying potential savings, and conserving resources.

How to Energy Management

The solutions that will be presented at EuroShop 2023 help to use lighting and air conditioning efficiently and at the same time in a customer-oriented way. The use of AI-based analysis and forecasting platforms also offers high potential here. At EuroShop, you will find numerous suppliers from many product areas who are dealing with this topic:

• Air conditioning
• Cooling systems
• Lighting
• Building Management
• Electromobility
• Energy monitoring

7. Experience

Inspire with a lasting effect

When designing any kind of physical place and space in times of increasing digitalization, it is more important than ever to create experiences that inspire enthusiasm and encourage people to stay and return. Important building blocks here are the stimulation of the senses and the creation of a feel-good atmosphere, but also the seamless integration of all digital channels to create a holistic positive customer journey.

Create memories and goosebumps moments

Whether the focus is on event, merchandise presentation, expo or marketing - many EuroShop trade show booths are just such experiential spaces and make the visit unforgettable. Let yourself be inspired by great ideas in the areas of:

• Design
• Shopfitting
• Events
• Multi-sensual marketing
• Live communication
• Omnichannel integration

8. third places

Turn your store into a shopper's paradise: Third Places

For the success of a stationary retail concept, it is often no longer sufficient to limit oneself to the pure sales function. Rather, the aim is to create a place where people feel comfortable, where they enjoy spending time, and which they ideally visit again and again, and not just for the actual shopping. The goal is to create a feel-good atmosphere and make shopping an experience.

Third Places are (semi-)public places where people meet, build relationships, exchange ideas and strengthen their sense of community. Classic examples are cafés, museums, parks or libraries – places that deliberately have nothing to do with home or work.

How do you create a Third Place?

Design, materials, light, and gastronomic offerings, as well as digital services, make a decisive contribution to the success of such third places. It is precisely in these areas that our exhibitors keep developing amazing approaches, making EuroShop an important source of inspiration.

You will find inspiring answers to many important questions at EuroShop:

• How do I make the store a place of well-being?
• What gastronomic offerings will attract my clientele?
• How do I use lighting to create a magical place?
• How do materials and design have a positive effect on the length of stay of my customers?
• How can I optimally combine the digital with the physical?