GameStop is planning on renovating some of its retail stores in hopes of staying relevant
While classic retail staples such as Blockbuster and Toys 'R Us failed to innovate after decades of unrivaled success and ended up fading away, one company continues to struggle and desperately try to stay relevant despite changing times. After financial concerns and rumored imminent buyouts earlier this year, GameStop has announced their latest attempt to revitalize their brand. The company will be teaming up with the designer firm R/GA, and plans to renovate some of its stores in order to spice up the "GameStop experience". A few of these ideas include letting consumers play games before they buy them, changing the store layout to "appeal to gamers", offering competitive e-sports sessions in-store, and selling more retro games. R/GA will be implementing these ideas in select stores across the United States. As to whether this is enough to prevent GameStop from becoming a mere relic of the past is uncertain, as one of their previous ventures--trying to pivot into selling mobile devices--resulted in major financial losses for the retailer. It also appears that GameStop's most recent focus, trying to sell more collectibles and toys has not been significant enough to secure the company's future alone.
The partnership with R/GA’s Austin and Chicago teams is part of GameStop’s broader business transformation strategy to evolve its efforts in cultivating innovative customer-centric opportunities to bring video game culture to life in every neighborhood. GameStop’s renewed customer-first focus stems from qualitative and quantitative research led by GameStop and R/GA that identified four major motivations gaming fans have for playing video games – immersion, achievement, creativity and community.
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