New global research challenges the industry’s obsession with visual stimulation, branded experiences and automation, finding that atmosphere, emotional response and familiarity may matter more than spectacle
Retailers may have spent too much time designing spaces that look impressive and too little time designing spaces that people actually remember.
That is the central finding of Spaces That Feel: Consumer Realities, a global study of more than 5,000 consumers across ten cities. Commissioned by retail design agency YourStudio and conducted by research partner Obsurvant, the study examines how consumers experience physical spaces and challenges some of the assumptions that have shaped contemporary retail design.
The research suggests a striking disconnect between the industry’s investment in branded physical experiences and what consumers ultimately remember. Only 24% of consumers’ most vivid spatial memories come from branded environments, despite 65% saying they prefer to experience a brand in a physical space compared with 15% online.
The implication is uncomfortable for retailers: consumers have not abandoned physical retail. Rather, retailers may not yet be creating physical experiences that are emotionally distinctive enough to remain in memory.
The researchers describe this disconnect as the “Emotion Gap” – the distance between what consumers want to feel in physical environments and what retail spaces currently deliver.
According to the study, people experience spaces through the body before processing them intellectually. Energy, vibe and the indescribable quality of a space emerged as the most important quality for 54% of respondents when entering a physical environment. Moreover, 54% said they decide how a space makes them feel in less than 30 seconds.
Rachael Stott, Strategy Director at YourStudio, said the findings challenge the industry’s longstanding emphasis on novelty and visual stimulation.
“For years, retail has operated on assumptions that prioritise novelty and hyper-visual stimulation in-store. Our data suggests these assumptions are creating an Emotion Gap—a growing distance between what people want to actually feel and what retail is currently delivering,” Stott said.
She argued that experiences may attract consumers initially, but emotional response determines whether the space becomes memorable.
“Experiences may get people through the door, but how spaces make them feel is what gets them to stay,” she said.
The research challenges the idea that the increasingly visual nature of consumer culture necessarily makes sight the dominant determinant of physical experience. Among consumers aged 18-24, who have grown up surrounded by visual content, “what you see” actually scores seven points below the global average as the most important quality of a space.
Younger consumers are more influenced by the people around them, at 37%, as well as physical qualities that cannot easily be digitised, including scent, temperature and atmosphere. Touch, at 22%, ranked last among the sensory qualities examined.
The findings also complicate the growing enthusiasm for branded communities. Despite the rise of community-oriented retail concepts, only 9% of respondents identified branded spaces as where they would most want to build human connections in the future. Just 13% identified belonging as an emotion they wanted to experience in-store.
Another finding challenges the assumption that successful experiential retail must be loud, spectacular or constantly stimulating.
Calm consistently emerged as an important emotional quality across the research. Thirty-six per cent of respondents associated feeling calm with a transformative spatial memory. Yet when asked about the feeling they desired in-store, pleasure, at 32%, ranked ahead of calm, at 28%.
The researchers interpret this not as a demand for passive retail environments but as evidence that successful spaces need to accommodate different emotional states. Their concept of “dynamic systems” suggests that consumers want environments capable of allowing them to disengage, explore, feel stimulated or simply become absorbed without the experience feeling forced.
The study also identifies what it calls an “Unbranded Memory Crisis.”
Only 24% of vivid spatial memories originate from brand experiences, while 84% of consumers seek out familiar spaces for positive emotional experiences – ten points higher than those seeking new experiences.
For retailers, the commercial significance lies in memory. A physical environment that is visually spectacular but emotionally forgettable may generate attention without creating the deeper associations that support repeat visits, loyalty and advocacy.
The Global Consumer Is Not Experiencing Retail in One Way
The research also reveals considerable differences between markets, suggesting that there is no universal formula for experiential retail.
In Australia, respondents favour environments that are calming rather than overstimulating and surprising rather than overwhelming. Melbourne consumers broadly resist experiences that feel excessively engineered, with almost 20% rejecting in-store automation.
Asia presents a markedly different picture. Consumers in Beijing, Delhi and Seoul appear more emotionally responsive and commercially receptive, with higher levels of trust in brands and greater appetite for technology and surprise.
Seoul stands out particularly strongly. Forty-five per cent of shoppers there want to experience pleasure in-store, the highest single-emotion score recorded in the study. Sixty-eight per cent identify “vibe” as the defining quality of a space.
Delhi is even more receptive to automation: fewer than 5% of respondents resist it.
The two cities also share another striking characteristic. Ninety per cent of shoppers in both Delhi and Beijing say physical experience drives purchase, compared with the global average of 78%. They are also the only cities studied where surprise is identified as a desired rather than rejected emotion.
The United States, represented by New York and Austin, behaves more like the European markets. Consumers require control and trust before pleasure or surprise becomes effective. “Pressure to purchase” was specifically identified by US respondents as a source of discomfort.
In London and Paris, consumers similarly want greater control over their experiences. Almost 20% reject in-store automation, compared with 12% globally. London also records one of the lowest likelihoods of brand experience influencing purchase, at 66%, while only 23% of respondents desire logistics technology in retail spaces – seven points below the global average.
BrandiQ Analysis: The Experience Economy Has an Emotion Problem
The most important finding in this research may not be the 24%. It is the contradiction between 65% wanting physical brand experiences and only 24% remembering branded environments as their most vivid spatial experiences.
That gap suggests that the problem facing physical retail is not the disappearance of the store. It is the disappearance of meaningful memory.
Retailers have correctly recognised that digital commerce cannot reproduce everything about physical experience. But many have responded by turning stores into theatres: screens, installations, immersive technology, photogenic displays, interactive walls and increasingly sophisticated activations.
The research suggests that this may be solving the wrong problem. The consumer does not necessarily remember the most technologically advanced environment. The consumer remembers the environment that made them feel something distinctive. That distinction is crucial for brand strategy.
From Experiential Marketing to Emotional Architecture
The research points towards a potentially important evolution in experiential marketing. The traditional experiential model asks: What can we make consumers do? The emerging model should ask: What do we want consumers to feel, and what combination of space, people, sensory cues and technology will create that feeling?
That is a much more sophisticated question. It moves retail design from spectacle towards what might be called emotional architecture: deliberately designing physical environments around psychological and emotional outcomes.
It also explains why “vibe” matters. Vibe is difficult to measure, difficult to manufacture and difficult for competitors to copy. That makes it potentially more valuable as a brand asset than another digital screen or interactive installation.
The AI and Automation Lesson
The findings also have implications for retailers racing to introduce AI and automation into physical stores. Technology is not automatically experience.
The Asian findings suggest that consumers in some markets may welcome automation enthusiastically. The European findings demonstrate that others may perceive it as intrusive or unnecessary. The strategic lesson is therefore not “automate” or “do not automate.”
It is know your consumer. Technology should serve the emotional and functional purpose of the space rather than becoming the experience itself. That distinction will become increasingly important as retailers deploy AI-powered recommendations, computer vision, smart checkout, digital assistants and personalised environments.
What This Means for African Retail
The study does not include an African market, so its findings should not be presented as direct evidence of African consumer behaviour.
But it raises useful questions for African retailers. Africa’s retail environment is changing rapidly, with modern shopping centres, supermarkets, lifestyle destinations, branded experiences and digitally enabled commerce expanding across major cities.
Yet African retail also has distinctive social and cultural dimensions. Markets such as Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Accra and Cairo cannot simply import experiential-retail formulas developed in London, New York or Seoul and expect identical results. The research’s regional differences make that point particularly clear. The future of African experiential retail may therefore depend on developing locally resonant emotional experiences rather than reproducing global retail aesthetics. For African brands, this could become a competitive advantage.
The question is not simply whether a store looks modern. It is whether the environment feels unmistakably relevant to the people who enter it.
BrandiQ Takeaway
The most provocative lesson from Spac]es That Feel: Consumer Realities is that consumers appear to be rejecting one of retail’s most persistent assumptions: that attention automatically produces attachment.
It does not.
A spectacular space can attract a photograph without creating a memory. A technologically advanced store can demonstrate innovation without generating affection. A branded community can promise belonging without actually making people feel they belong. The stronger retail proposition may be quieter and more difficult to engineer.
Make people feel something worth remembering.
That requires retailers to move beyond visual merchandising and experiential spectacle towards a more holistic understanding of human behaviour – one that incorporates atmosphere, sound, scent, temperature, people, cultural context, technology and emotional expectation.
The future of physical retail may therefore belong not to the brands that build the loudest spaces, but to those that understand how a space feels before consumers can explain why.
Research credit
Spaces That Feel: Consumer Realities was commissioned by YourStudio, with research conducted by Obsurvant, based on interviews with 5,258 consumers across generations and genders in Austin, New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Beijing, Seoul, Delhi, London, Paris and Melbourne. YourStudio says further sector and regional findings will be released over the next 12 months as it develops a framework for measuring brand and retail experiences.
