In last 6 months there are drastic changes happening in retail design, especially in London area. As UK is not seems to be coming out of recession crisis and stores are improving the user experience, I can see many stores are placing customer experience representatives in the store, who helps the customer to approach to the specific products in store.
I have seen this system in India, but so far, retail shops of London were know for independent shopping experience and there was a very big disadvantage of this system, because many people were very shy to take in-store help and as a result store actually fails to serve their customer for better profit and for selling unlisted item for customer.
Now due to these kinds of representatives, store is actually trying to understand psychology of customer and sell multiple products by showing better price match than it was before! This also solves the purpose of unemployment which UK is facing very badly at the moment.
