Human-Centric Marketing
Retail Marketing as Entertainment: How Experiential Retail Creates Emotional Pathways to Purchase
Retail isn’t dying. It’s just putting on a better show.
In today’s political climate, it’s tempting to fall into the appeal of an illusory simpler time when everything was more straightforward and honest — the golden era of US consumerism. To believe in this fantasy — never mind the era’s rampant inequity and exclusion—is to imagine there was a time when shopping was purely transactional, untouched by experiential retail or emotional marketing.
You needed a thing — shoes, a toaster, a gallon of milk — and the store was just a container to hold all the things you might need. Maybe there was a friendly clerk who knew your name, and if you were lucky, they’d even remember that you preferred whole milk to skim.
Whereas now, it can seem as if we’ve built an elaborate carnival around the simple act of buying. Branded experiences, immersive pop-ups, digital displays that track your eye movement, elaborate loyalty programs engineered to feel like a hobby. And when you see your mall transformed into this spectacle, it’s tempting to roll your eyes.
What’s really happening makes you the equivalent of the old guy in a red hat on the street shaking his fist at everyone he chooses not to relate to, screaming, “Get off my lawn!”
The carnival has been here all along — you may just be noticing the fresh coat of paint.
But I think it’s worth stepping back to ask why this is happening. Is it really just about coddling a generation that can’t focus on anything longer than a TikTok video? Or about pandering to adult children who never learned to function without a dopamine hit?
I don’t think so.
I think it’s something much older, much simpler, more instinctual. It’s about connection and trust. And it’s about that nagging, persistent human need to belong to something — anything — that feels real.
The Illusion of Simplicity
Let’s not kid ourselves that retail was ever purely transactional. Department stores have been staging elaborate window displays — early forms of immersive retail experiences — since the late 1800s.
Spend some time watching golden-era films and TV shows like The Women (1939), I Love Lucy (1951–57), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), or Funny Face (1957), and you’ll get a good idea of the mid-century shopping experience. The consumer was treated to all the pomp and circumstance of royalty — provided you fit their racial and economic profile and carried a good credit line.
And while the average department store doesn’t offer all the catering and personal service they once did, you can still hear the tinkling of a grand piano on the main floor. Walk past the makeup and perfume counters, their scents filling the air, and you get the sense you’ve arrived in a palace of refined luxury — an early example of brand experience long before we called it that. Even grocery stores pipe in music to nudge your mood, and corner shops still sell you familiarity and belonging as much as bread.
Maybe the props have been updated, but the performance goes on. What’s changed is that audiences have stopped believing in it the way they used to.
Today’s shoppers are more skeptical — and for good reason. They’ve seen brands perform sincerity when it’s convenient and backpedal the moment the political winds shift. They’ve watched companies exploit social causes as marketing props.
They’ve been inundated with false equivalencies, untrustworthy memes, and learned the hard way about cheap, poorly made knockoffs hawked online. In a world where sponsored content masquerades as friendly advice and every feed is a battleground of manipulation, it’s no wonder people increasingly rely on their own networks over corporate promises.
Edelman puts it plainly: in an environment where consumers feel bombarded, they are “looking to brands for safety, to feel calm, confident, inspired. They want optimism, education, and even a sense of community.” (Edelman — 2025 Trust Barometer) And while many brands still cling to the idea that consumers make purely rational decisions, the evidence shows otherwise.
The Behavioral Science of Why Experiences Matter
Behavioral economics tells us something we probably already knew instinctively: people buy with their emotions first and their logic second. According to Retail Dive, 95% of people make purchasing decisions based on unconscious emotional connections.
Take a second and let that sink in — ninety-five percent. When a win is simply getting that extra point or two on profit margin or ROI, that’s not just an opportunity — that’s a game changer.
And when traditional credibility has eroded, experiential retail becomes a way to reestablish a genuine connection. When you create something people can see, touch, hear, and feel — something that feels alive — you’re practicing emotional marketing and brand storytelling that you couldn’t fake in a press release.
It’s not pandering; it’s psychology.
It’s who we are. It hits something that clearly resonates with our monkey brains.
Authenticity: Not Optional
The quickest way to lose an audience is to pretend you’re something you’re not.
Consumers have become experts at sniffing out inauthenticity. I would guess that most of you, dear readers, are looking at my use of em dashes and phrasing and wondering if this was AI-generated or the real McCoy. That instinct — to question, to look for the seams in the story — is exactly what shapes how people evaluate brands.
They aren’t just scanning for machine-made language; they’re scanning for hollow messaging and borrowed voices. And they’re clear about what they prefer. In fact, according to Edelman, 73% of people say their trust in a brand would increase if it authentically reflected today’s culture, with over 60% saying silence isn’t an option.
You can’t slap an “inclusive” label on a campaign, run it during Pride Month, and then pivot to radio silence as soon as the political leadership changes. You can’t preach transparency whilst hiding your executive compensation packages when someone asks uncomfortable questions.
Authenticity means telling the truth even when it’s messy. Even when it’s bad PR, it means owning what you are: a business that exists to make money, yes, but also a business made up of actual humans trying to do better.
Done well, story transforms spectacle into meaning.
It doesn’t require a “woke” mentality or a liberal bias; you can be all about conservative ideals, innovation, or even Tumbler pigeons. It requires clarity and consistency. The brands that will last aren’t the ones with the glossiest veneer. They’re the ones with the most consistent values.
As brands grapple with this demand for transparency, they must also contend with a deeper crisis — an epidemic of disconnection and mistrust that no amount of glossy marketing can disguise.
Trust and Belonging in the Era of Disconnection
We’re living through an epidemic of disconnection. Loneliness is rising, institutional trust is falling, and digital interactions — while convenient — often feel hollow.
Experiential retail has stepped into that vacuum. And there’s a reason 74% of marketers say they expect brands to increase budgets for immersive retail experience by next year, per the 2025 EventTrack Report. It’s not because people can’t be bothered to pick out a new pair of sneakers without a laser light show. It’s because they crave moments that feel unique and shared with a limited group, even if carefully orchestrated behind the scenes.
McKinsey has called for retailers to radically increase omnichannel integration, citing the rapidly increasing table stakes for brick and mortar survival.
Look at what Golden Goose did with their “Venice to Venice” Golden Spirit pop-up. They didn’t just build a branded installation. They fused the underground art culture of fashion with the skateboarding subculture in an unforgettable VIP late-night party. It wasn’t just models on a runway in a warehouse or mannequins posed in glass. It was interactive, vibrant, alive — and maybe a little subversive.
According to Golden Goose’s published case study, this earned them a staggering one billion impressions with a 20% increase in web traffic and a 32% increase in sales during the campaign launch.
Far from gimmicks, they’re evidence of what happens when you bother to meet people exactly where they are.
The Multi-Sensory Advantage
Retail experiences work because they hit more than one sense. Sight is easy, but smell, touch, and sound make an experience stick. According to LiveSignage, dynamic content doesn’t just “decorate” a space — it can increase dwell time and drive purchase intent simply by creating a more immersive atmosphere.
Abercrombie & Fitch and its other stores were on to something as far back as the early 2000s. I remember those first experiences so vividly that even now, the memory hits me with the same jolt of repulsion, as though no time has passed at all.
The overly curated playlist pounded over their speakers, just shy of night club level cacophony. Their custom cologne destroyed my sense of smell like a pubescent boy who’d just discovered Axe Body Spray. And it worked — those sensory assaults seared the experience permanently into my brain.
Now imagine if the team at Abercrombie & Fitch had designed that experience with a little more care, tailored to feel meaningful and relevant to the people walking in, rather than assuming everyone needed an off-the-shelf identity stamped with the caricature of an over-perfumed teenage cliché.
That’s the opportunity brands have now: to create an experience unforgettable for all the right reasons, not just because it made your eyes and ears bleed. When brands design multi-sensory experiences with intention and respect, they create memories that attract rather than repel.
Critics will argue this is just marketing theater — and sometimes, they’re right.
Story: The Engine Behind Experience
We can flood our halls with scents and music. We can rig every surface with LED displays and interactive screens. And sure, people might even get a kick out of the novelty for a minute or two. But without purpose or a story, it all dissolves the moment they step back into the parking lot.
It’s the difference between a parking lot carnival and the rich, layered world-building of Pirates of the Caribbean. One is a distraction. The other is a fully-formed experience you will talk about for years.
I’ve worked on both ends of that spectrum — some projects that leaned on props and spectacle, others that used immersive design to create a real sense of discovery — and I’ve seen firsthand how experiences without narrative rarely hit the mark.
Story transforms sensory overload into meaning. It turns a branded installation into something personal, relevant, and worth caring about. Story is why some retail experiences convert while others are remembered only as awkward exercises in corporate vanity.
When you craft an experience anchored in story, you invite people to see themselves in it. You give them something to believe in, to own for themselves. That’s what makes them want to come back — not because they need another t-shirt or another pair of shoes, but because they feel like they’re part of something bigger than a transaction.
The Path Forward
Critics will argue that all this is just the latest marketing theater, destined to fade. And in some cases, they’ll be right — if brands chase novelty instead of relevance.
Here’s what I’d argue: if you’re in the business of selling anything — products, services, ideas — you need to stop thinking of entertainment and experience as optional. It’s not a bonus feature or a last-resort gimmick. It’s a fundamental part of how humans process life.
But as brands embrace ever more sophisticated digital experiences, they also inherit a new responsibility: to wield technology with transparency and respect, rather than as another tool for manipulation.
Entertainment without honesty is just theater. And experience without story is just noise. It will fail if you can’t back it up with real values, real transparency, and a narrative in which people can see themselves.
Authenticity is foundational. Experience is the catalyst. And story is the force that transforms both into something unforgettable.
Brands that understand this will thrive — not because they’re jumping through hoops to impress an easily distracted audience, but because they’re building something more profound: a relationship grounded in meaning, trust, and a story people can actually believe.
And in the end, that’s all any of us are really looking for.
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