Marketing Approaches to Pop Up Stores: An Exploration of Social Networking.

Abstract

Internet and mobile technologies are redefining how retailers promote themselves to consumers. For instance, over recent years, the high street has witnessed the phenomenon of ‘pop up stores’, which rely on social network sites (SNS) and text messaging to inform consumers of their presence. In essence, they are retail stores that open up at empty retail locations for a temporary period of time and then disappear. The purpose of this paper is to describe this trend in terms of which retailers are doing it, why, where and how are they doing it? In addition, the paper is theoretically underpinned by an examination of literature drawn from entrepreneurial marketing in order to explore how retailers have exploited internet and mobile technologies in order to create marketing and branding opportunities. Finally, the paper offers directions for future research.