Digitalism and recent technological developments, like RFID and NFC, enable customers to interact with the product and allow them to purchase everywhere at all times. In this digital environment, customers ask for orientation, transparency and trust in the product.

In order to understand consumers’ individual needs in detail and ultimately enhance their shopping experience, we interviewed people on their typical shopping behaviours and came up with five different shopping typologies:

• The Inspiration Seeker
• The Duty Shopper
• The Recreation Shopper
• The Smart Buyer
• The Aesthete

Each of these typologies requires different store concepts and technologies to support the individual shopping habits and desires. The Berlin-based “Kochhaus”, for instance, invented a new and simple store concept, which is targeted towards the group of consumers that we identified as the “Inspiration seekers”. The shop is organised in various stations displaying a picture of a meal, the corresponding recipe, all necessary ingredients to prepare the food and the total costs. That way the customer gets cooking inspirations, can choose a meal and is able to buy all the ingredients and even kitchen equipment at once.

“Das Kochhaus” in Berlin, “Eataly” in New York where you can get your fruit and vegetables freshly sliced and the REAL Future Store where customers get to test new technologies like the “Mobile Shopping Assistant” are rare examples of how to meet consumers’ needs. The potential for new concepts and the usage of modern technologies is still far from being exploited, which leaves a lot of room for new innovative shopping designs.