The development of experiential marketing and the e-commerce rise : An empirical study of the relationship between experiential marketing and e-commerce

In the past years, our society digitized increasingly with the development of internet and the exploration of all its capacities. One of these new uses is the e-commerce, the possibility for customers to buy a product online at any time of the day, and to be delivered at their home after a short period of time. The development of e-commerce has been a blow for the physical retail sector which saw in this new technology a powerful competitor. Since a few years, the retail sector has started to change its habits with the development of new kinds of experiential marketing campaigns in stores. The aim of this research study is to investigate the reasons which encouraged the development of these new experiential marketing campaigns. Did they appear as an answer of the physical stores to the development of e-commerce in order to avoid losing all their customers or was it rather for other reasons that finally turned it into a complement to e-commerce? We will proceed to this research by collecting qualitative data by the mean of interviews conducted with marketing professionals with the aim to collect their insights and personal observations about the recent newness which appeared in the marketing area. These empirical evidences will allow us to explore the nature of the relationship between the experiential marketing and e-commerce. The results of our research show that the recent development of experiential marketing in stores has been made possible by the democratization of new technologies allowing the stores to set- up new customer experiences in a small space. Thus, it appears that the development of these new customer experiences is more of an enhancement to the development of e-commerce rather than an answer. However, even if it hasn’t been set-up to compete against e-commerce, these new kinds of marketing campaigns are really powerful for the physical retail to keep their customers coming in stores