Marketing experts have long known the benefits of having their products look appealing to consumers. Whether they have placed products in a display that attracts attention and looks good to the consumer or they have made the food product they are trying to sell look fresh and delicious, marketing professionals have made use of what they know about human behavior to help sell their products. While this practice is still common today, it has evolved into more focus on a multisensory approach. Now retail designers and marketing experts must make use of many disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, and a new field known as ‘atmospherics’. Atmospherics has been defined as the ambient factors that emphasize the sound, feel, smell, and looks of the buying environment. These sensory triggers are designed to produce emotional effects in the buyer that would intensify the probability that there would be a purchase.
There is no better way to appeal to the senses and emotions of a buyer than with lighting. This was certainly the case with Bonhams Auction House in London. Their Bond Street headquarters has undergone a dazzling makeover, using LINEAR Light colomix Flex LED lighting from OSRAM. As Director Magazine reported, the new lighting design is a perfect marriage between the auction house’s 220-year old legacy and the modern age.
The new lighting allows Bonhams’ staff to have exactly the lighting that is needed for each display. For example, the OSRAM’s cool coloured museum-style LED lighting provided a superb look for a display of Chinese antiquities but was too dark to produce a video. All that was necessary was the flick of a switch and they had the perfect light for a different purpose. Bonham’s also wanted to adapt to and alter the mood of the environment of a particular room depending on how it was being used. They wanted a different look and feel for when the room was being used as a pre-sale exhibition to when it was used as an auction room. Also, different lots of items have varied lighting needs to be shown perfectly. OSRAM’s lighting versatility met all their requirements perfectly.
Bonhams also was able to reduce its environmental impact by replacing its original halogen lights with OSRAM LEDs. The LEDs have a superior light output efficiency which means that they rarely have to run at 100% to create an appropriate mood. Usually 5% up to 40% is sufficient.
Since the completion of the renovations and the installation of the new lighting designs, Bonhams has won a Design Excellence Award from the American Institute of Architects (UK). But more importantly, their revenues have risen by almost a fifth on the previous year and profits were more than double that of 2012. Bonhams chief executive attributes this gain to the new lighting design using OSRAM lighting.
