Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
Does the Google Visitor Experience Offer a Preview of Future Retail Possibilities?
Google is dipping its toes into experiential retail with the Google Visitor Experience at its Mountain View, California, campus. The space includes art, community, retail, and foodservice spaces with an emphasis on local businesses, as well as a shop where visitors can shop all things Google.
The retail-focused aspects of the Google Visitor Experience include the Pop-Up Shop, which will feature a selection of goods from local creators, and the Cafe @ Mountain View, which will offer dishes made with local, seasonal ingredients and an emphasis on sustainability and biodiversity.
Google also will incentivize shoppers to try out its products at the Google Store, which will let shoppers browse a range of merchandise, including Pixel phones, watches and tablets, Fitbit wearables, and Nest cameras. The space includes a curved wall dubbed a “cabinet of curiosities” designed to entice shoppers into interacting with the merchandise contained on its shelves, and Google experts are available to walk customers through the selection.
In addition to retail, the Google Visitor Experience will offer seasonal programming at the Plaza. For instance, it held a Community Day event on Oct. 21 with local food trucks, live music, and a maker’s market. The space also features six interactive art pieces as well as murals and other artwork from participants in Google’s Artist in Residence program.
It remains to be seen whether this is an experiment that could be carried over to physical retail stores or an exclusive feature designed to entertain guests at the Google campus. Most of the features, such as the Cafe and the Plaza, will likely be exclusive to headquarters. However, some other aspects could be used as blueprints for other retail experiences.
Two Google Stores already exist in New York City, and while they also put an emphasis on the shopping experience, the “cabinet of curiosities” appears to be a new concept. Feedback from the Google Visitor Experience could provide a foundation to be used in future expansion of the Google Store concept, giving the brand an opportunity to test new retail concepts on a property where Google already operates.
Of course, it’s also possible that Google simply wanted to open a nice visitor center. Last month, Google confirmed plans to lay off hundreds of workers who handled recruitment and hiring, just one cost-cutting measure among many in Silicon Valley, according to CNN. While the Google Visitor Experience might be laying the groundwork for a future brick-and-mortar expansion, for now it might just be a nice place to visit.
Discussion Questions
How could the Google Store in Mountain View be used to inform the visitor experience promised in future store openings? Will the overall Silicon Valley downturn impact any retail plans Google has been working on?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Shep Hyken
Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations, LLC
Jeff Sward
Founding Partner, Merchandising Metrics
Other than opening a couple of concept stores in the last few years, Google is decidedly not in the retail store business. That fact that they haven’t expanded beyond these couple of stores is telling. While some of the ideas that Google is creating in their Mountain View campus may offer interesting ideas for other retailers to consider, I doubt that it will have much impact on what actual retailers are doing or planning in their own stores.
Some of the ideas Google is implementing – such as creating an experience, integrating foodservice, and providing a social space – are applicable to retail in general. However, Google itself will struggle to roll this concept out more widely as it doesn’t really have enough to sell. In terms of devices and services, it’s not exactly Apple!
Good point about the limited breadth of Google’s products. With Google’s dominance in search, it is a little surprising that they haven’t expanded its product offering with private label items like Amazon. Google has a loyal base of search customers and they seem poised to have a marketplace that could eventually rival Amazon’s marketplace.
I doubt that Google will be affected by the local economic downturn in Silicon Valley, but the retail question is an interesting one.
I think the Google Visitor Experience is little more than an add-on to their HQ campus and a way to get customers onto the campus for a little experimentation and data collection for now. The Google campus is famous for all the food perks for employees, so this required little effort to set up on their home turf.
It would be an entirely different initiative to even pilot this concept anywhere else, let alone roll out hundreds of stores. Still, if I’m in the Bay Area, I’ll go check it out. There is clearly a value in an in-store presence for Google, but I think they’re very early on in the process of building out a store network of any reasonable size. Google is huge, though, so anything is possible.
Google has a really great copy writer. When the first Google store opened in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood, I couldn’t wait to play in the “sandboxes”. After all the hype, I was underwhelmed.
The Google Visitor Experience reminds me of the Spheres and the things to do in the Seattle neighborhood Amazon calls home. By inviting people to enjoy the public spaces at its headquarters, Google makes its products and services more intriguing. Why wouldn’t you give consumers an experience you can control?
Will some of the Google Visitor Experience eventually end up in stores? Probably, but with a deeper retail focus. After all, the stores job is still to sell products. That’s very different from an art scavenger hunt, but a visit to a Google store can be fun too.
Initially, Google’s concept seemed like Apple stores’ blend of events and tech but with food. Looking closer, Google Visitor Experience is highly social, placing the focus on people more than products.
Google’s welcoming atmosphere will bring people in. Where they gravitate in the store will inform the tech leader with data insights for future stores.
Recent layoffs in Silicon Valley will inspire more people to network at inviting places like Google Visitor Experience.
I have to believe that there is a lot of temptation for Google to get deeper into retail. I also have to believe that they find Amazon’s struggles in retail to be instructive. Local + community + art + food service + “cabinet of curiosities” sounds like an intriguing recipe for retail, albeit a difficult formula to scale. It won’t be easy for Google to carve out a unique, and scalable, brand promise. But I am hoping that they do. Retail could use a breath of fresh air that is truly experiential and not coupon or discount driven.
While Google may make some sales, this is a marketing and branding project more than a retail project. Google is part of most of our daily lives. Extending this with some branded products and technologies will add to some users’ experiences. Google knows competition is on its heels (ChatGPT type technologies and other search solutions). This is a way to reinforce their brand recognition. And if the stores work, they will surely move more emphasis into retail.
The Google store sounds like more of a “lab” than a store. They are experimenting, seeing what works and what does not work. Other companies have run similar exercises (Microsoft used to have a store of the future executive briefing area, for example) to various ends. Ultimately, I believe Google (Alphabet?) as a brand does not resonate enough in a B2C environment in order to replicate what they have built in Silicon Valley. Time and consumer reaction will (as always) be the final arbiter however I believe this is a “one and done” effort.
Well said, Neil Saunders and Jeff Sward, Google’s retail concepts, focused on creating experiences, integrating foodservice, and offering social spaces, could be beneficial for the retail industry at large, but the company may face challenges in widespread implementation due to its comparative lack of tangible products and services compared to tech giants like Apple. Google’s challenge: forging a unique, scalable brand promise for experiential retail shift.
This seems more like a visitor center experience than any kind of retail experience. It would make sense that Google expends some effort to use some of the best practices found in retail to make it a more appealing visitor experience. However, there is little to suggest this is about entering the retail space. To be clear, Google carries a lot of different products (not all physical)- and they have the opportunity to showcase any and all of them in their visitor center experience: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/products/#all-products
I think it’s a mistake to think the visitor experience will be the basis of future store offerings. Google doesn’t seem to be interested in dedicated physical retail stores and the complexity of scaling them and making them a success.
This is a great example of a brand utilizing its existing footprint to maximize its potential. In this case, Google has a large campus in Mountain View that offers an opportunity to engage with customers in a way that expands on their local presence, and interested tourists, organically. As the article mentions, these plans for an experimental retail experience feel a bit more like a nice visitor center however, it could serve as a test showroom for their existing New York stores. Even better yet, this experiment may show that there’s an appetite for more Google retail experiences. This could represent a different opportunity for Google to expand an existing revenue stream, engaging with the local Mountain View economy and tourists, to diversify and build resilience against downturns.
What Google has built is a truly immersive experience for visitors by showcasing cutting edge technology, interactive displays and seamless integration of the online and offline customer journey. I would think that the end goal would be to entice visitors to keep coming back and eventually make purchases – creating a sense of brand affinity. To do this, Google will need to lean on its most valuable asset coming out of this experiment – transactional data. The broader data repository of consumer wants and needs can be used to inform targeted promotions and communications, but also Google’s future store openings. While the overall Silicon Valley downturn may impact future retail plans, Google’s innovative approach and commitment to the customer experience will help them navigate challenges and maintain momentum. The outcome could also serve as a lesson for other retailers across industries on how to engage with consumers, even if on a smaller scale.
Google has large, global brand recognition, so I don’t see the Silicon Valley downturn negatively impacting the company’s retail plans. In terms of future store openings, it’s smart for Google to blend its digital services with an in-store experience where consumers can test new products.