How Mixed Reality will revolutionize the eCommerce Industry?
It is a bright sunny morning and as Lee spins her F-22 Raptor fighter plane, she remembers that she has to buy gifts for her little niece. At once, she changes the course of the jet from Tokyo to London and lands at Regent St. She enters the store, browses the catalog and orders the dress. The next morning, the dress is delivered at her home in Tokyo. Here is a little secret, Lee isn’t a billionaire but it is her new VR headset that gives her the wings to experience all of that at the comfort of her couch.
As VR is on the verge of disrupting many industries like gaming, medicine, tourism, education, etc, e-commerce is not left behind either. Mixed reality is expected to open up new opportunities in eCommerce and solve the challenges that traditional shoppers faced when compared to Physical Stores and Outlets.
One of the biggest challenges faced by the eCommerce Industry is the Consumers need to first have a look and feel of a product before buying it. Every one of us likes to shop at the comfort of our own home but still, we head out to physical stores just to make sure that the product is perfect when it comes to fit, or the look of it. Although we might end up buying the same product from an online store for a lesser price but still we take that extra pain just to look at the product physically to make an informed decision. Mixed reality is about to change that. While Virtual reality can give you the feel of the store, Augmented Reality can actually let you try the product. With the help of mixed reality, you can even look at how your new sofa would look in your living room which is surely a step ahead of the physical store.
Swedish multinational, IKEA, has already launched an AR catalog app that allows you to see how certain items of furniture would look in your home. Consumers can virtually visualize how the furniture will look and, importantly, how it will fit in their home according to the product’s dimensions.
Virtual Reality not only provides the same level of experience as provided by real physical stores but also takes it one step further by making sure the products in the store are the ones that you are interested in. How many times do we have to take troubles to find the shoe section or the section of our interest in the physical real outlet? But no more with Virtual Reality. The VR generated store will use the power of Artificial Intelligence to make sure that the products in the store are the ones that you are interested in or you would be interested in.
eBay, and Australian retailer, Myer has joined forces to provide a glimpse into the future of shopping by creating the world’s first Virtual Reality (VR) Department Store. According to the eBay press release, the shopper first selects their areas of interest at the beginning of the experience and the V-store is custom-built around these needs, making the most relevant products visible first. As shoppers move through the store, the smart technology suggests other products that might be desirable or interesting, based on what the store knows about them.
Some of the biggest names in the eCommerce Industry have already started building their virtual stores and it won’t be long when people could experience the best of both the worlds, i.e eCommerce and Retail Stores, sitting at their own home.
