The Labs

One of the most innovative pieces to iMAGINE Alexandria’s community will be a retail lab situated in a customizable space and ready to mimic any retail store. At any time the lab could simulate an aisled grocery store, an open computer electronics store or clothing store filled with racks. The benefits are two-fold: retailers can test their products, merchandise, packaging and racking systems and creatives can see how their ideas and concepts fit into the retail mold.

The lab itself will have built-in observation rooms with one-way mirrors facing the retail space. Behind these one-way mirrors, marketing experts, brand managers and students will be able to observe consumer reactions to point-of-sale marketing techniques, creative displays, new technologies, multiple messaging techniques or even customer service styles.

With real consumers in the lab, the retailers and creatives will be able to test strategies and tactics in a real and safe environment giving iMAGINE Alexandria a premier marketing research facility. The lab funding will be paid for by short-term or long-term leases to brands, agencies and vendors seeking to test new campaigns for product launches, seasonal programs and visual merchandising.

With this lab, iMAGINE Alexandria will transcend the focus group method as we know it. By giving the creative community a means of proving the effectiveness of its theories and ideas, the iMAGINE Center will be the premier organization in marketing research. Professors and teachers will clammor to use the lab as a real-life educational experience for students. Partnerships with universities and colleges will educate the next generation of marketing professionals to create a highly skilled work force to feed the creative economy.

The research area would also have multiple computer labs to monitor online consumer behavior trends. Interactive companies would use these labs to conduct usability focus groups to test their latest web sites, applications or kiosks. This resource for the growing interactive community would be a major benefit to product development and success of their software.

…iMAGINE…a retail theater that is teeming with information on shoppers and their habits and gives creatives a chance to test the effectiveness and appeal of their ideas in a real environment.