A large part of the shopping and purchasing experience is visual. That makes visual merchandising a valuablen essential component of any marketing effortsprogram — in physical retail, digital storefronts, and the growing overlap between the two. In any marketing environment, consumers rely heavily on visual information during the buying process, using it to evaluate products and , compare options, then ultimatelyand make purchase decisions.
With all this in mind, this path is worth considering for college students pursuing a career in marketing and merchandising.
Let’s explore this field of study to see if visual merchandising may complement your interests, skills, and goals.
What Is Visual Merchandising?
Visual merchandising allows retailers to use retail space—whether virtual, brick-and-mortar, or both—to present products in their stores. This type of merchandising helps attract customers, using appealing elements to represent and promote specific products and their benefits and features.
The process of visual marketing and merchandising involves:
- Conducting product and audience research to determine the best visual displays, such as a window display, mannequin, signage, or graphic.
- Planning, designing, building, and displaying product displays within the store’s interior design layout.
- Adding value to products using activities associated with communication and delivery.
- Ensuring the display fits within the retail store layout and accentuates the product without overwhelming or disrupting the rest of the store’s effectiveness and customer experience.
- Providing a display that allows products to sell themselves.
- Motivating consumers to make a purchase and become loyal customers.
Its Purpose
Research published in the Journal of Business Research finds that visual merchandising has gained significant importance in contemporary retail practice, functioning as a driver of consumer engagement, brand recognition, and purchase behavior across both physical and digital retail environments.
Here are three essential objectives for visual marketing, store design, and merchandising:
- Attract customers’ attention to the brand and product to create interest and lead them toward the buying process to generate profits.
- Increase sales by introducing and showcasing products in a way that is visually appealing and meaningful to customers, providing ideas on benefits and potential uses.
- Improving the shopping experience to ensure shopper retention and repeat business. This type of merchandising helps customers associate the visual displays with the brand itself, therefore cultivating an image, style, and integrity customers know and trust.
History of Visual Merchandising
As noted in the introduction, although visual merchandising did not begin with e-commerce websites like Amazon, eBay, and Shopify, it has become synonymous with online marketing.
You could probably go back hundreds of years to see that any time a merchant wants to sell something, they must include a visual element to the sales process. We’ll start with the first known example of visual marketing with Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1883, working at Marshall Fields.
Selfridge had an idea of placing products closer to customers, putting them within reach on designated counters and display tables instead of out in the store, blocked together with older products with less demand. He also brought the idea of window displays to life, attracting customers passing by and piquing their interest in visiting the store, whether they intended to or not.
Over the past few centuries, industry leaders have taken this concept and developed it using some basic marketing principles:
- Incorporate display ideas and techniques into everyday shopping, making it practical for everyday shoppers who might pass by or stop in the shop.
- Compare current displays and strategies to those of competitors to find ways to stand out and gain a competitive edge.
- Pass brand and product messaging to customers to inform them of key products and keep them in the store.
- Avoid leaving traces of the planning process, and keep everything organized, removing piles of boxes and other materials associated with constructing the display.
Different Types of Visual Merchandising
Since the inception of visual marketing and merchandising, merchants and their marketing teams have sought and tried various types of merchandising to attract, tempt, and entice customers to visit their shops, engage with store displays, and become customers.
Knowing that all customers are not alike nor lured by the same stimuli, marketers continually seek new ways to create displays that have an impact on customers at the psychological level, using lighting, color, messaging, storytelling, sound, scent, and technology. We’ll go into further detail about these elements later.
When it comes to brick-and-mortal retail, there are also four key elements of merchandising to consider:
- The store layout, which includes the floor area where products are kept for sale, personnel space, and merchandising space.
- The store exterior is an ideal space to attract customers, using window displays and marquees that lead customers to the entrance.
- The store’s core interior, which typically features floors, lighting, fixtures, and wall coverings.
- The store’s interior display is the way in which retailers display merchandise, including the location or locations, such as display tables or standing cutouts, etc.
The following are typical forms of visual merchandising:
Window Displays
Effective window displays can draw in customers who had no intention to visit a shop. Different window display elements include:
- Mannequins
- Dioramas and scenes
- Murals
- Photographs
- Live demonstrations
Mannequins
Mannequins can be incredibly and uncannily lifelike, or they might provide a ‘skeletal’ framework of the human form and have no head. Regardless of the form, mannequins have been used to demonstrate fashion and styles for clothing shoppers since the late 16th century.
Signage/Graphics
Signage and graphics might stand on their own, or they can be used in conjunction with a larger marketing strategy. Many retailers create everything from billboards and sandwich boards to website banners and digital bulletin boards to alert current and prospective customers about their products. Whether words only or combined with images, signage and graphics are an essential part of a healthy marketing strategy.
Vehicle Wrapping
Vehicle wrapping is an extension of signage and graphics, letting a vehicle become a moving post for signage and graphics. It turns a vehicle into a digitally mobile billboard, bringing the branding to the people any time the automobile is driven in public. Vehicle wrapping also helps businesses that lack a visible storefront or only have an online store.
Crucial Elements of Visual Merchandising
The strategies of visual marketing often have an underlying psychology component, leading marketing teams to try to get into the minds of their target ideal customers.
Let’s look at the most important elements of working as a visual merchandiser.
Color
Color often influences emotion, communicating through different tones and different colors. Since colors have different meanings, it’s important to try to create positive color associations between displays and potential customers.
Lighting
Illuminating a display is important for attracting customers, but the right lighting can ensure that customers see products the way they are meant to be used.
Storytelling
Storytelling gives retailers an opportunity to tie the product to the brand and to each prospective buyer. The right messaging, including high-impact words and phrases, can significantly impact consumer buying decisions.
Sound
If sound is an option and appropriate to the display, many retailers pipe in music or feature some recorded narration that helps tell the product’s story. Customers might feel a kinship with a brand that uses a certain music genre or song, or they may feel comforted by the narrator’s voice.
Scent
Marketers know that any time they can incorporate scent into a display, they should do so. Scent is nearly as powerful as the impact of color on moods and emotions.
Point of Focus
Essentially, the point of focus is where the display is and how it focuses on the product. This hotspot serves as the centerpiece of merchandising design, along with props, mannequins, and signage.
Location
A location for merchandising could be the store’s front window, the awning out front, a specific table, an end cap, a website banner, or a vehicle or billboard.
What Skills Does a Visual Merchandiser Need?
Visual merchandising sits at the intersection of creativity and commerce, which means professionals in this field benefit from a well-rounded skill set. No matter if you’re designing a window display for a flagship store or curating a product layout for an e-commerce site, these core competencies will serve you well:
- Aesthetic and design sensibility – A strong eye for color, composition, proportion, and spatial arrangement is foundational to the role. Visual merchandisers are able to translate brand identity into displays that are not only appealing but also cohesive — ensuring every element from lighting to signage works together to tell a unified story.
- Analytical ability – Great design alone isn’t enough. Effective visual merchandisers track metrics like foot traffic patterns, dwell time, and conversion rates to evaluate what’s working and refine what isn’t. Understanding how to interpret sales data and customer behavior helps you make display decisions that are both beautiful and profitable.
- Knowledge of consumer psychology – From the emotional impact of color to the way shoppers naturally move through a store, visual merchandisers draw from behavioral insights to guide purchasing decisions. Understanding why customers respond to certain stimuli (and how to strategically use those triggers) is a significant competitive advantage.
- Adaptability across store formats – A visual merchandiser may work in a sprawling department store one day and a boutique pop-up shop the next. The ability to adjust your approach based on available space, store layout, target audience, and retail format — including digital storefronts — is key in today’s omnichannel retail environment.
- Familiarity with retail technology – Digital price tags, augmented reality try-on features, 3D display modeling software, and data analytics platforms are increasingly common tools of the trade. Visual merchandisers who are comfortable adopting and working alongside emerging retail technologies will be better positioned to create immersive, forward-thinking displays.
Visual Merchandising in Action: Real-World Examples
Understanding visual merchandising in theory is one thing; seeing how leading brands put it into practice, however, brings the concept to life. Below are three real-world examples that illustrate the range and power of visual merchandising across different retail environments.
- Apple: Minimalism as a message – Apple Stores are a masterclass in using the retail environment itself as a marketing tool. Every element is deliberate: open floor plans, clean white fixtures, natural wood tables, and products displayed without packaging at eye level. There are no cluttered shelves or promotional signage competing for attention. Instead, the display invites customers to touch, explore, and interact, which reinforces Apple’s brand promise of simplicity and innovation before a word is spoken by a sales associate.
- IKEA: Storytelling through room settings – IKEA has built its entire in-store experience around immersive, room-by-room vignettes that show shoppers exactly how products can look in a real home. Rather than organizing merchandise by category, IKEA arranges items in styled living rooms, bedrooms, and kitchens. This form of aspirational storytelling helps customers envision the product in their own lives. Plus, the approach is a direct application of the storytelling and point-of-focus principles that define successful visual merchandising.
- Sephora: Interactive displays and retail technology – Sephora has consistently led the beauty retail industry in blending physical and digital merchandising. In-store displays are organized by product category and use, with testers prominently available to encourage trial. More notably, Sephora has integrated technology — including virtual try-on mirrors and digital skin analysis tools — directly into the store experience. This reflects the growing importance of retail technology in visual merchandising to create personalized, engaging moments that a static display simply cannot achieve.
Benefits of Visual Merchandising
Visual merchandising is a lot of hard work for marketing teams and the employees creating the displays. That means that it must offer many benefits to make the investment worth it for a business (an increase in retail sales for example).
If you plan to work in marketing, you will need to reassure your employer and help them understand the benefits and value of effective visual merchandising.
Increase Revenue
Information overload and constant distraction are par for the course in modern society, making it challenging to get and keep people’s attention. With powerful visual product displays, businesses can attract customers via storytelling. Strong and eye-catching visuals can increase messaging by 42%.
Build Brand Awareness
When your company’s visual displays align with your brand messaging, you’re on track to building brand awareness and attracting customers who share your core beliefs, especially about the products and their uses.
Expand Customer Base
Visual marketing and merchandising allow your business to expand the reach of your message and expand your customer base when you tap into their needs, desires, backgrounds, and how they think and feel.
Challenges of Visual Merchandising
As beneficial as visual marketing displays are, they come with some challenges, including:
- Limited display space or flexibility due to store layouts can make it difficult to create the display as envisioned.
- A limited budget might prevent merchandisers from bringing the vision to life per the design.
- Finding the balance between catching people’s attention and overwhelming them.
- Ensuring staff can manage the displays, especially if there is any need for human involvement.
Future of Visual Merchandising
Technology continually impacts the retail industry, and marketing and merchandising are not exceptions to this rule. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing because technology can support merchandising efforts. However, it’s important that merchandisers avoid letting technology overpower the messaging and artistry. It means that visual merchandisers like you will need to find ways to use technology while ensuring displays and messaging foster a personalized shopping experience.
As e-commerce visual merchandising becomes increasingly important, finding new ways to highlight products in the most realistic way possible is essential. For example, technology might allow for more 3D modeling to help products pop off the page.
Are You Ready to Start Your Path to Becoming a Visual Merchandiser?
Do you have the perfect combination of a mind for business and a creative streak? Those traits can serve you well as the foundation for this university study track and career path.
At JWU Online, you can pursue a certificate in visual merchandising, Bachelor’s in Fashion Merchandising & Retailing, or MBA in Marketing to enter this exciting profession at your ideal comfort level.
For more information about completing your digital marketing degree or certificate in visual merchandising online, complete the Request Info form, call 855-JWU-1881, or email [email protected].