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Retail design concepts are complex designs meeting functional and aesthetic demands from various constraint generators. However, the literature on this topic is sparse and offers only little support for store designers to deal with such challenges. To address this issue, the purpose of this paper is to identify the most important constraint generators, investigating the types of constraints they generate, and providing guidelines for how to deal with constraint elicitation.

The three contributions mentioned above are developed through discussions of the literature and eight case studies of fashion store design projects.

The paper shows that the influence of the constraint generators decreases during the design process except for supplier-generated constraints, which increase in the final stages of the design process. The paper argues that constraints should be elicited close to their occurrence, and that doing so requires a solid understanding of relevant constraint generators.

The paper provides a structured basis for further research and identifies areas warranting further study. Although, the paper’s focus is on fashion store design, the findings may, to some degree, be applicable to other types of store design projects.

The understandings provided by this paper may help designers to deal proactively with constraints, reducing the use of resources to alter design proposals.

The paper: defines the most important constraint generators from the perspective of retail store designers, clarifies the types of constraints they generate, and provides guidelines for how to deal with constraint elicitation.

Several frameworks of retail store environment variables exist, but as shown by this paper, they are not particularly well-suited for supporting fashion store design processes. Thus, in order to provide an improved understanding of fashion store design, the purpose of this paper is to identify the most important store design variables, organise these variables into categories, understand the design constraints between categories, and determine the most influential stakeholders.

Based on a discussion of existing literature, the paper defines a framework of store design variables and constraints between these. The framework is investigated through six case studies of fashion store design projects.

Through a discussion of literature and empirical studies, the paper: identifies the most important store design variables, organises these variables into categories, provides an understanding of constraints between categories of variables, and identifies the most influential stakeholders. The paper demonstrates that the fashion store design task can be understood through a system perspective, implying that the store design task becomes a matter of defining a set of subsystems, while considering their mutual interdependencies.

The proposed framework may be used as a point of departure and a frame of reference for future research into fashion store design.

The paper may support retail designers and retail managers in fashion store design processes by clarifying which store design variables to consider and providing an understanding of the constraints between them.

The perspective on the fashion store design task offered by the proposed framework adds a layer of understanding to the way in which existing literature describes the challenges related to store design. The empirical studies of fashion store projects demonstrate that the described system perspective offers a useful way of organising fashion store designers’ experiences from design processes.