Pop-up retailing: Integrating objectives and activity stereotypes

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of pop-up retailing, which is, to date, a relatively neglected element in the retailing literature. Pop-up retailing can be defined in terms of an experientially orientated consumer–brand interaction, taking place within a particular, albeit temporary, “territory”. Given the limited extant academic literature, the paper briefly outlines antecedents that provide a broader theoretical context for the study of pop-up retailing, in particular experiential marketing and customer experience management, retail environments and atmospherics. It then moves on to identify more strategic objectives that pop-up retail activities could potentially contribute toward achieving, conceptualized in terms of communicational, experiential, transactional and testing objectives, before identifying four different general stereotypes of pop-up retailing. These are the product showcase/anthology, the brand pantheon, the tribal gathering and the market tester. These objectives and stereotypes are not mutually exclusive, and their interaction is highlighted via an exploratory case study of one pop-up activity developed by the fashion brand Marisota, held in April 2014 in Manchester, UK. The paper proposes an initial classificatory schema of pop-up activity and concludes with an agenda for future research in this relatively neglected area.