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The latest trend of home appliances retail stores is all about the scene experience. Under the pressure of e-commerce and contraction of consumption, physical stores tap the market by delivering a new way of life to consumers through the scene experiences.
As one of the oldest home appliance stores in Malaysia, TBM (Tan Boon Ming Sdn Bhd) has taken the initiative to seek change and build the traditional home appliance retail channel into a star-rated hotel-like scenic experience store.
The sense of presence and visual impact is what most customers feel when they enter the new TBM store at Bandar Puteri Puchong. From the multi-dimensional presentation of the TV display area to the kitchen appliances corner, the store is filled with a sense of home. Sitting on the comfortable sofa feels like experiencing a 100-inch giant screen TV in the living room of one’s own home. This unprecedented scene subverts the traditional display concept of Malaysian electrical stores.
The clouded Malaysian home appliances market is in the midst of a collective pressure due to the market downturn in 2023. However, TBM seems to be a significant market challenger.
“TBM, as a home appliance dealer, has a history of nearly 80 years. We have experienced various market environments, and we have taken the initiative to seek changes. Reconstructing the retail and supply relationship is the unchanging core of TBM. What we have to do is to move at a faster pace and find the best window to bring high-end consumers back to physical stores through a scene experience and ecosystem. We want to make our customers truly enjoy a lifestyle enhanced by technology.” said Tan Wai Keat, the third generation helmsman and General Manager of TBM, to FrontierTec in an interview.
Empathy – Scenario experiences are extremely appealing to consumers.
When Jay walked into the TBM Bandar Puteri Puchong store on November 15th, he described what he saw as “disruptive”.
The arrangement of all categories in the store is obviously well-designed, with a more three-dimensional and hierarchical sense of visualization. The display style is simple and neat like Japanese retail stores, but also contains the light luxury and artistic beauty of European and American retail stores. The home scene experience brings a sense of presence, which greatly helps users’ purchasing decisions. This is a collective display of the beauty of life and the feast of technology.
Comparatively speaking, traditional electrical stores continue to use a common layout, where products are placed in an orderly manner, in line with the characteristics and customer demands of the previous era. The scene experience, on the other hand, is more in line with the lifestyle of youths. They prefer to make purchasing decisions through the scene experience and make their own judgment based on their lifestyles and product functions.
This means that electrical stores are at a turning point. Taking a step forward, the scene experience can open up an growing market, representing the future .
In fact, after the scene experience, consumers’ perception is that the future has come. On the second floor of TBM’s newly opened retail store, the most attractive part is a TV experience area of about 30 square meters, equipped with two sets of three-person sofas, which are placed quite carefully.
For example, the first set of sofa faces a feature wall, about three meters apart. There is an 85-inch TV on the minimalist wall; to the right of this sofa set, a three-person sofa is similarly placed, facing a 100-inch TV. The feature wall is styled in warm wood tones, and is filled with the warmth of home under the reflection of three warm-colored light strips.
Consumers sitting in different positions can pick the most suitable TV according to the realistic scene of their own living room. Changing according to needs is a distinctive feature of the scene experience.
The display of TVs of other sizes is even more ingenious. In order to present the three-dimensionality of the TV, realistic colors and the best sound effect, TBM designed a display method similar to a revolving door. Frames are fixed to a column at an acute angle of 60 degrees, which resembles open hands, two TVs are displayed on the top and bottom of each frame.
This three-dimensional, fan-shaped, three-dimensional display effectively presents the TV’s cool technologies, five-star theater-like audio-visual, and more natural and realistic colors. Consumers can stand at different angles to experience the impact of natural light from outdoors and indoor lighting in the display area.
“This is an experience like no other. I’ve been to many electrical stores before, and none of them were as heartwarming, TBM’s scene experience and three-dimensional display is an exception. Here, I could visualize the scene as my own home because the scene setting was more realistic and close to the living environment of ordinary people, a nearly one-to-one realistic presentation. After the experience, I purchased a 65-inch TV at TBM.” Jay confessed to Frontiertec that the experience has a significant impact on his purchasing decision.
TBM impresses consumers with sincerity by empathizing with every consumer, creating a scene close to the reality, so that users can see and touch, making the virtual scene so real, so that they are willing to settle with the deal.
Compared to a price-driven strategy, this empathy card as played by TBM has a stronger appeal to consumers. The pursuit of high quality life and the willingness to pay for the scene experience are the consumption characteristics of premium customers. They prefer offline home appliance stores that change according to their needs.
Visualization – Scenic experiences bring the art of living to consumers.
TBM, a well-known and established home appliance retailer in Malaysia, currently has 6 specialty stores.
As the first in Malaysia to attempt to integrate scenic experiences into its outlets, TBM epitomizes a period of transformation for offline home appliance retailers in Malaysia. TBM becomes a reference for other retailers in their transformation journey.
Tan Wai Keat, General Manager of TBM
“We need to keep up with the times, and one of the steps is through the scene experience throught he dimensions of visualization, empathy, and art, so that customers entering the store will have a sense of home, so that they are willing to adapt different products into their own scenes, and so that they feel the warmth of the products with more technological and artistic effects. This is the lifestyle we advocate and the life concept we convey.” said Tan Wai Keat, General Manager of TBM.
Creating an innovative scene experience through digitalization, real and virtual scenes, and presenting an artistic lifestyle is an important reason why TBM’s new stores have been attracting more and more young consumers since they opened. Some of these customer groups may not be buying home appliances, but come just to seek inspiration for their homes through the TBM scene experience and draw ideas for decoration.
TBM, the scene experience store, also carries the change of lifestyle. In the current homogenization of home appliances, consumers prefer home appliances with visual impact and artistic aesthetics.
Take TV as an example, consumers want to break the stereotype of traditional home appliances, and hope that home appliances can be static or dynamic. Being static, a TV can become a painting to decorate the home environment; being dynamic, it is for playing video games or watching sports. Every detail becomes clearer, the picture has more sense of presence, the color becomes closer to nature.
In conclusion, the scene experience is the route for offline home appliance retailers to achieve sustainable development in the quest to pursuit growth. TBM took the initiative to strike, took the first step towards the scene experience. In fact, it could be a solution to the industry’s problem of e-commerce extrusion.
