Gaining customer centric understanding of retail displays for future innovations

Purpose: The aim of this research is to provide insights for future display design through understanding the processes of sensemaking of retail displays in digitised retail. Design/methodology/approach: The research applies media elicited interviews and engages thematic analysis to understand agency and advance mental models of retail display. Actor Network Theory (ANT) is engaged to flatten the ontology to traverse digital and physical realms as well as more semiotic sources. Findings: The article presents a system comprising sensemaking processes of displays in digitised retail and traces the blending traits of physical and digital displays labelling an emerging display terminology applicable across realms. Research limitations/implications: The participating retail concepts' limited resources for technological innovations plus the customers all being local and recruited through the physical store represent this study's limitations. Practical implications: The developed system reveals a process for abandoning the familiar but obsolete understanding of retail displays to replace it with new insights to support the judgement and decision process for designing innovative future displays with a customer centric logic. Originality/value: The article is novel in flattening the ontology of retail displays to fit an organisational interface perception of the link between customer and retailer.