Over 150 participants from eight countries came together at the STI Group's POS congress to discuss the display of the future and the future of the display
To commemorate 50 years of corrugated cardboard displays in Europe, international experts from the branded goods, retail and advertising industries accepted the STI Group's invitation to partake in a journey through 50 years of display history followed by a daylong congress with high-quality presentations from internationally renowned trend researchers and POS experts.
Moderator Hans G. Güldenberg, formerly Chairman of the Board at Nestlé Deutschland AG and himself for many decades the person responsible for the POS strategy from numerous household brands, deftly handled the role of moderator, tying the many different elements of the programme together into one fascinating whole.
The speakers all agreed that POS communication bears tremendous importance in this age of online communication, perhaps more so than ever before. After all, the POS is precisely where the customer and the product come into personal contact. Dr. Martina Kühne, Senior Consultant at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute of Zurich describes the store as the "third place, alongside the living room and the workplace, that people treat as a key point of contact". "Roughly 220 times each year, people visit one of an average of 13 commercial establishments", confirms Dr. Hendrik Schröder, Chair for Marketing and Trade at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He is calling on the decision makers of the marketing work to focus their advertising activities under the motto "less is more". Overly complicated advertising confuses the customer instead of providing orientation at the POS.
Ibrahim Ibrahim, owner and operator of the London-based design agency Portland, focused his speech on the shopper and her needs. "When they go shopping, customers aren't just looking for values, they themselves are looking first and foremost to be appreciated."
