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Virtual Reality (VR) Marketing Shopping

The (virtual) reality of where shopping is headed

By Jim Mason, Executive Director Strategy & Insight

June 22, 2016 | 6 min read

I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in the days of VHS tapes. I have great memories of going to the Blockbuster video store with friends to pick out the newest releases. We would walk up and down the aisles, look at the titles, shout out movie quotes and eventually decide on one to rent (somehow “Weekend at Bernie’s” and “My Cousin Vinny” were regular picks).

ted baker store

So it caught my eye when I saw Netflix experimenting with a virtual video store. Could it be that the brand was actually winking to the legacy experience of walking down the video aisles? Dubbed the “Netflix Zone”, its prototype experience replicates the physical video store experience I grew up with. Using virtual reality equipment, a consumer could browse personalized shelves and pick up videos to watch. Maybe it is just nostalgia, but I appreciate how the engineers used VR technology to merge the strengths of the video store with the newer digital on-demand model.

Virtual reality will fundamentally change consumer interactions. It’s fascinating to see how it can support retail and how it’s shaping the next step for the online shopper experience. Retail is unquestionably complex, but the shopper experience can be simplified down to two main tasks: Discovery (finding the right item) and Assurance (building confidence that I should buy this product).

The Assurance portion of the shopper experience seems to be the focus of most VR efforts today. For example, AT&T recently launched an in-store VR experience that is essentially an advertisement for Carnival Cruise Lines using Samsung devices. Customers enter an AT&T store, put on the Samsung equipment, and are transported to a tropical location to experience the joy of a Carnival Cruise. VR is well suited for this type of experience and I’m impressed with those companies coming together to bring something to market in over 100 stores in the United States.

And that is just the beginning of “Assurance” related solutions, there will soon be an array of VR experiences designed to immerse you in the world of the product and show you how the product would look in its natural habitat. Automotive retailers may show a car in a variety of outdoor settings, or a home improvement retailer might illustrate how new kitchen cabinets would actually look in situ.

It may seem gimmicky at first as companies experiment with what works. The solutions will be found in retail stores while consumers adjust to the new technology and won’t be developed by the retailers themselves, but by the companies making the consumer product.

The Discovery VR experience addresses how VR can improve the shopping process itself – the method of finding the right item from the entirety of your online assortment. Discovery represents a key complexity of eCommerce. Consumers want ‘bricks and mortar’ shopping from the comfort of their own home, but most digital sites rely on a tic-tac-toe board approach to displaying products. This flat approach doesn’t allow consumers to sense the relative product dimensions and see a wider variety of merchandise.

E-commerce has been evolving and maturing over the last 20 years, but these new tools represent a step change in capabilities. In fact, SapientNitro is calling this new format V-commerce. I believe VR experiences that focus on Discovery point to a new way of responding to consumer behavior and will be key to capitalising on V-commerce.

There are two emerging styles for viewing the product assortment. The first involves a new way of viewing product connections. eBay just launched a virtual department store where it is showcasing 12,500 products in an entirely new browsing construct. It groups products in a cobweb style, and by staring at an item or a grouping, consumers can see more like it. eBay calls this approach “sight search” and it is an immersive and personalized way to view products.

ebay

However, it is the second style that I’m particularly excited about. It is a more direct replication of the in-store environment, and it leverages ideas consumers are already familiar with. Retailers take great care to optimise the visual merchandising in their stores, and these VR experiences extend that same level of care into the online experience.

Ted Baker created a fantastic example of this style with its virtual London store, ‘Ted Baker & Moore’. This concept store depicts a specific store in London that consumers can immerse themselves into. With the ability to view the store in 360 degrees and walk around, you really feel like you are shopping in the store environment.

Retailers should be experimenting with this technology now. There will be plenty of companies exploring “Assurance” based solutions, so retailers looking for sustainable competitive advantage should investigate “Discover” based solutions. These experiences will better prepare companies for the eventual transition from a purely e-ommerce world to a V-commerce world.

Jim Mason is executive director strategy and insight for Razorfish UK

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