By Claire Reilly
Following last Saturday’s official opening of the Sony kiosk at Westfield Parramatta in Sydney’s western suburbs, Sony has spoken about the brand’s new offering and the point of difference they’re hoping to bring to shopping centres.
Speaking to Current.com.au today, Sony Australia’s general manager of consumer sales, Jeremy Senior, said the new kiosk was designed to offer consumers a hands-on shopping experience, with the store format able to showcase products in a different way to traditional retailers.
“Kiosks provide consumers with the opportunity to get hands on with our product in a high traffic area. It also enables us to display product categories next to each other, which isn’t always possible in our retail partners, who may or may not range all of our product line-up or may have store formats that don’t allow us to put all of our mobile phones next to our PCs or TVs.”
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Sony claims to be in for the long haul with the new-look kiosk format — first rolled out in Chatswood in Northern Sydney 18 months ago — with Senior saying that the brand was not building kiosks in places such as Parramatta to be there for just “three to six months”.
Senior also noted that the kiosks allow Sony to sell a premium product and brand message to consumers in an experiential way.
“Our macro strategy is that Sony wants to talk quality and connectivity,” he said. “We believe that TV models such as 4K help us sell quality, and we believe that [our 4K TV] is the best TV proposition on the market today. The connectivity driven through NFC is also something that we’re really keen to communicate to consumers…for that experiential component.”
While Senior conceded that Sony’s kiosks “do also transact”, he argued that it was more about providing consumers with education about Sony products and a hands-on experience, rather than competing with retailers on price. For his part, Senior said he was happy for consumers to trial Sony products at a kiosk and then buy them in a traditional retail store.
“Price isn’t our key messaging,” he said. “We know from the experience that we’ve had in Chatswood that consumers are engaging with our kiosks, understanding the products and buying them elsewhere, and we’re happy for that to happen.”