Conference Agenda

This research explores how fashion brands can replicate touch and garment materiality through digital design strategies to engage Gen Z shoppers in India, addressing the sensory absence in e-commerce. Using an interpretivist, qualitative, multi-method approach involving eight semi-structured interviews and five participant observations, the study investigates how Virtual Reality (VR) can enhance emotional engagement and responsible consumption in fashion retail. Guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), findings show that gamification, interactivity, and personalisation—combined with transparency and brand trust—drive consumer acceptance. The study highlights the importance of inclusive and culturally sensitive VR design that considers accessibility, affordability, and infrastructural realities of the Global South. By framing VR-enabled fashion e-commerce as an experiential and responsible design approach, the research reimagines materiality, emotion, and engagement within India’s evolving digital retail landscape.

This paper presents a longitudinal study of instore shopping technologies (ISTs) and their contribution to the phygital fashion store. It builds on studies of store design in an omnichannel environment and the use of ISTs for distinctive customer experiences (CX). The aim is to understand changes in fashion retailing brought about by ISTs and the extent to which they influence CX in the customer journey. The research was undertaken in three stages, in 2014, 2019 and 2024 in three of London’s West End shopping streets. The Methodology was replicated in each stage, using observations of store interiors and in-depth, qualitative interviews with 25 consumers. The findings provide retail designers with new knowledge about consumer-technology interactivity, retail sectoral differences and the rate of change in the use of ISTs. In conclusion, the paper highlights the evolving relationship between retailers and consumers, consumer agency and the shopping experience.

This study explores customers’ motivations to become regulars at contemporary specialty coffee shops and identifies the features that make these places meaningful enough for repeated visits. Drawing on observations and in situ interviews with staff and regular customers in Hong Kong, Copenhagen, and Columbus, the study examines how regular destinations emerge in contemporary café culture. The analysis identifies recurring characteristics of places that individuals consider their regular spots: (1) high-quality offerings, including quality products and professional service; (2) convenient and attractive locations; (3) the resources to accommodate different types of visits; (4) connectedness, or a sense of community and shared values between regulars and the shop; and (5) deeper relationships involving subtle forms of cocreation among long-term regulars. The study identifies both similarities and contextual differences between the cities and suggests directions for future research.

This paper examines experiential retail strategies in high-end fashion through two global flagships stores in East Asia: Lemaire Ebisu in Tokyo and Loewe Gaozhai Chengdu (Taikoo Li). Prior scholarship traced spatial storytelling in high-end flagships to connect brand identity with local environments, frameworks that render the narratology of ‘in-between’ as a design tool bridging localisation with customer experience remain underdeveloped. This study positions flagships as ‘in-between’ interfaces linking space, local culture, and brand to generate place-specific experiences. Through an exploratory qualitative approach comprising document analysis, store observation, and spatial-typological analysis, this research develops the ‘in-between’ as a conceptual framework that operationalises threshold conditions as narrative and design dimensions. The findings contribute by linking place-based spatial grammar to customer experience, enabling localised and shareable brand encounters.

Temporary luxury branded events run on short cycles and bespoke builds that accelerate material churn. We present a circular phygital product–service system that operationalises the circular economy (CE) through a 4R frame (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycling) across warehouse‑to‑event journeys. Developed via a multi‑method design inquiry with a tier‑1 contractor, the system couples physical touchpoints (reusable fold‑flat transit boxes, adjustable racking, standard labels) with digital orchestration (a live digital warehouse, list‑based outbound/inbound workflow, and a sustainable materials library). The architecture aligns roles and decisions, protects and identifies assets, and makes reuse the default under luxury brand constraints. By embedding traceable actions and CE‑aligned rules into everyday handoffs, the PSS shifts procurement, storage, dispatch, return, and redeployment toward value retention. The contribution is a replicable, practice‑ready route from circular intent to operational change in branded environments, advancing responsible retail without compromising speed or aesthetic standards.

Brand experience is frequently theorized as a set of fixed domain attributes, yet how consumption context reorganizes the structural priority of these domains remains largely unmeasured. This paper argues that brand experience is a contextually generated design phenomenon that cannot be adequately addressed through static frameworks or single-context evaluation. Focusing on chain coffee brands in Taiwan, we conceptualize dine-in and take-out as distinct behavioral ecologies and apply the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to construct comparable experiential hierarchies across both contexts. Our findings reveal divergent experiential logics—dine-in privileging environmental immersion, take-out foregrounding product reliability and service rhythm—and non-obvious sub-criteria priorities only quantitative weighting can expose, such as the disproportionate role of service efficiency over interpersonal warmth in take-out settings. We propose a scenario-driven brand experience model as a diagnostic tool, positioning design research as a mediator between experiential data and strategic action in responsible retail practice.