Semiotics Boosts Retail Sales – Find out how and start using semiotics today! 

Thanks very much to Ollie Banks for inviting Dr Rachel Lawes to be a guest on The Retail Transformation Show. The interview is live now! [198: How Semiotics Can Boost Retail Sales » OB&Co (obandco.uk)] 198: How Semiotics Can Boost Retail Sales – Retail Transformation Show with Oliver Banks (getpodcast.com)

“The word semiotics, it’s a useful word, it’s taken off in market research and in wider marketing over the last 20 years, to a large extent driven by the UK, which is great. The first definition you will ever run into if you work in these kinds of industries is that it is the study of signs and symbols. What is a sign or a symbol? It’s any small unit of communication that means something. Coke is red and Pepsi is blue and we all can recognise intuitively that those colours add different qualities to the brand. Consumers can also tell you about it in a focus group, they’ll say things like ‘red seems like it’s got more energy’ or ‘blue, I don’t like it for this soft drink, but I like it when it’s a bank or a tech company’.

What you’ve got there is the beginnings of semiotic analysis.

Your customers and members of the public are doing semiotics all day, all the time. They’re very media literate. They are used to thinking about signs and symbols and so they are going around decoding everything in this kind of way. Now I’ve just mentioned colour here. A really easy way to get to know semiotics is to realise that colour communicates certain messages to consumers in your branding. What’s more meaning of that colour might vary, depending on what generations your customers are, where are they in the world and what local cultures or subcultures they are part of.

That is the really basic, introductory-level explanation of how semiotics is useful for marketing. We recognise what we like to call signs and symbols in marketing. We use that to make marketing more successful, to make brands more appealing to consumers and to make shopping easier”.

Take control of your brand by reading “Using Semiotic in Retail: Leverage consumer insight to engage shoppers and boost sales”. Available worldwide from Amazon, publisher koganpage.com and all good bookstores.

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Market Research Society (MRS) , Kogan Page Marketing & Communications, Lawes Consulting Ltd, Joe Lawes, Dr Rachel Lawes, Lawes Consulting Ltd,  Retail Transformation Show