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PurposeThe aim of this research is to provide insights for future display design through understanding the processes of sensemaking of retail displays in digitised retail.Design/methodology/approachThe research applies media elicited interviews and engages thematic analysis to understand agency and advance mental models of retail display. Actor Network Theory (ANT) is engaged to flatten the ontology to traverse digital and physical realms as well as more semiotic sources.FindingsThe article presents a system comprising sensemaking processes of displays in digitised retail and traces the blending traits of physical and digital displays labelling an emerging display terminology applicable across realms.Research limitations/implicationsThe participating retail concepts' limited resources for technological innovations plus the customers all being local and recruited through the physical store represent this study's limitations.Practical implicationsThe developed system reveals a process for abandoning the familiar but obsolete understanding of retail displays to replace it with new insights to support the judgement and decision process for designing innovative future displays with a customer centric logic.Originality/valueThe article is novel in flattening the ontology of retail displays to fit an organisational interface perception of the link between customer and retailer.

This research aims at demonstrating how retail designers through empathic interviewing and listening to the story that retailers tell about their retail concept, can program the retail design task, identify inconsistencies not thought of using the "retail design thematic map" developed and give better advice to retailers. Using independent retail as case the article sheds light on the empathic interview as method, strengthens retail design as a relevant discipline for retail strategy, and clarifies the role of emotion in the clientretailer relation regarding strategizing.