What Virtual Reality Means For Retail In 2018

Recent technological advancements are creating huge waves of changes in every field and affecting how businesses are conducted. What changes can be expected in the retail business at the onset of virtual reality in retail is a good question to ask. All businesses are working on incorporating these latest trends especially to offer an enhanced user experience, which in turn will increase their brand value. These technological advancements are so attention-grabbing that they are now a hot topic of discussion despite being criticized by many about the extent of their needs and usage and the appropriateness of the hype created by them. So here’s a glimpse of what we’re going to be discussing –

Better in-store experience with VR

In-store like shopping experience at your doorstep

Standing out in the crowd and building brand awareness

Every business, retail is certainly no exception to that, wants to use these cool new technologies to encash the benefits provided by them in terms of increased user engagement.

Better in-store experience with VR

The main focus of the retail sector is on enhancing the in-store experiences for customers. Most of the customers will prefer virtual reality to be incorporated in their shopping experience. But right now it is not used widely. Some brands have already started using it; Lacoste, for example, has created a retail mobile app development with the power of AR. This was done basically to attract the younger audience.

Clothing brand American Apparel has also provided customers with a mobile app driven shopping experience. Another retailer provided mirrors incorporated with AR technology in their store. Some apparel brands successfully use AR incorporated mirrors to facilitate buying decisions of the consumers.

In-store like shopping experience at your doorstep

To provide customers with an in-store like shopping experience in the comfort of their homes, some retailers created an app with VR for this purpose. As many customers prefer to shop from the comfort of their homes, this technology is enabling the brands to extend their reach.

Apple provides unparalleled augmented reality experiences through ARKit on iOS which is the biggest AR platform in the world. ARKit can incorporate real-world objects into your AR experience making it a deeply immersive one. These apps give users an opportunity to view products in great detail. The intricacies of products that make them special and unique are easily viewed as if the product was right in front of the consumer rather than a virtual space.

The apparel, shoes, and cosmetics sectors will get benefit greatly from this technology.

Standing out of the crowd and building brand awareness

Retailers are basically using VR to attract consumers and retain them by making their shopping experience more fun and enjoyable. VR is not a very recent technology but recently a lot of experimentation has been done related to it can be implemented. By opening up to this immersive, three-dimensional world of VR, they are hoping to stand out in the highly competitive market.

This technology is having a major impact in the purchasing decisions that customers make. By being able to see products or places that you might not have been otherwise, helps you make a much more informed decision especially before making a financial commitment. We can easily see this in application when travel bookings are made after virtually visiting the prospective hotels and locations rather than basing the decision on just pictures, guesswork and research. When you are not seeing the product in real than it’s quite tough to make decision-based on just pictures. In other cases making a decision in travel bookings also involves a lot of guesswork and research.