What is a pop-up store? The benefits of opening one

Update date:2024.03.21 Column

A pop-up store is a store that opens for a limited period of time in a vacant storefront or rented space.

table of contents

Pop-up stores in the broad sense and the narrow sense
The benefits of opening a pop-up store
Pop-up store examples
Stores as promotional venues
Summary
- Other Marketing Terms Explained

Pop-up stores in the broad sense and the narrow sense

In a broad sense, a pop-up store refers to any store that is open for a limited period of time, but in practice, the term is not often used in this broad sense.

For example, in a broad sense, a pop-up store can be set up for a limited time at a department store or commercial facility event, but such stores are rarely called pop-up stores. A pop-up store is a limited-time store that is set up for promotional purposes rather than as a sales method.

In other words, rather than simply selling products and making a profit, the purpose is to increase brand awareness and communicate with users, and the term "pop-up store" refers to a limited-time store that creates stores and services that are entertaining enough to be shared on social media and popular enough to be covered on television.Incidentally, pop-up stores are also sometimes called pop-up shops or pop-up retail.

The benefits of opening a pop-up store

So why choose a pop-up store as part of your promotion?

Promotion can be expected to spread through social media

The first advantage of pop-up stores is that they are well suited to viral marketing, which is a promotional method that encourages users to recommend products or services to their family, friends, and colleagues.

In particular, with the increase in the use of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in recent years, if you provide content that users will want to talk about, that information will spread quickly through social media. Pop-up stores are designed with the goal of spreading information on social media in this way. They create displays and product menus that will make users want to take photos and post them on social media, and the exterior and interior of the store are designed to be more unique than permanent stores so that they are newsworthy and convey the content of the products and services they want to promote.

In addition to spreading the word on social media, you can also expect coverage on TV and in magazines due to its rarity, which will also have an advertising effect from the mass media.

Ability to communicate with customers and conduct test marketing

For example, if a store only sells products through mail order, there are few opportunities to directly interact with customers. However, even if you try to have a permanent store, there are high hurdles because the marketing know-how and best-selling products are often different between mail order and brick-and-mortar retail.

For these reasons, opening a permanent store in a prime location carries a great deal of risk, so by opening a store in a prime location for a limited period of time, pop-up stores can be used as a place to test market new products and communicate with users.

Easier to measure advertising effectiveness

OfflineMarketing measures advertising effectivenessThere are many promotional methods that are difficult to implement. For example, in the case of television commercials, you cannot measure the effectiveness of how many users became aware of your brand or made a purchase without conducting a separate survey. However, in the case of promotions using pop-up stores,

Number of visitors during the period
In-store sales
Number of people using coupons distributed in stores
Number of topics that became trending based on SNS hashtags, etc.

It is easy to set quantitative goals like this and verify the effectiveness.

Pop-up store examples

So what are some examples of pop-up stores? It is said that pop-up stores first started in London, England, when a major retailer set up a temporary store on a ship during the Christmas sales season, which became a hot topic. From there, the pop-up store technique spread all over the world and to various industries.

For example, when a collaboration product between LOUIS VUITTON and Supreme was released in Japan in 2017, it is said that a line of nearly 1 people formed at the pop-up store in Omotesando.

In addition, the major online retailer Amazon not only operates online, but also periodically opens brick-and-mortar pop-up stores. For example, in July 2017, they opened a pop-up store in Roppongi where customers could try out Prime member benefits and services for free, and in October, they opened a pop-up store in Ginza called Amazon Bar, where customers could enjoy Amazon's selection of alcohol.

Additionally, at the end of the year they opened a pop-up store in Shibuya to coincide with Cyber Monday, which attracted a lot of attention.

Stores as promotional venues

What we can see from these pop-up store examples is that stores are no longer just places to sell products.

The relationship between the real world and the internet is not a one-way street where you promote on the web, drive people to your store, and make a profit. The reverse flow can also occur, where you promote at a pop-up store and make sales through online shopping.

In this way, it can be said that it is necessary to make good use of the promotional effects that both the real world and the Internet have.

Summary

In a broad sense, a pop-up store refers to a store that is open for a limited period of time, but in a narrow sense, it refers to a store that is open for a limited period of time for promotional purposes.

Especially in the case of IT-related BtoC businesses, web marketing tends to be the focus of sales promotion, but this type of real-world promotion is also important for communicating with users.