The Future of Shopping
Extended Reality (VR, AR & MR) technology has been around since the ’90s. But failed to take the expected leaps for multiple reasons; heavier headsets, conformity to human experience, and tunnel vision flattened the curve. But now, it’s no more a passing fad; it is the future of reality. The technology has taken multiple leaps and bounds in the last couple of years and is heading towards an uncharted path with big leagues to play under its belly.
Covid19 pandemic has added fuel to the adoption, virtual experiences are becoming imperative for every domain. Every single aspect of our life, be it retail, health, finance, and other services.
With retail, we already see there is an unprecedented path owing to the current crisis. Many enterprises have already started gearing up for the future and have started seeking customer opinions. Many of you have already started getting surveys from multiple shopping giants on the new shopping experience?
Some of the common questions that I get to hear from all of them
- Will you be visiting the shopping center?
- How many people can be allowed into the shopping center?
- What is your view of social distancing?
- How often should we sanitize the shop?
- Do you need shopping assistants, floorwalkers reaching out to help you?
- Will you expect trial rooms to be sanitized every single time someone uses it?
- How would you like to collect your merchandise? And many more
The answers to these questions are personal and differ from each individual. A physical shopping center cannot be designed for individual needs especially after a crisis like this. There is a fear instilled in everybody’s mind which is inducing a change in human behavior. We have people who have fear of germs (Verminophobia/Germaphobia) and people who have fear of crowded places (agoraphobia) and this is also raging towards dislike to people, countries, places, and racism (Xenophobia).
Understanding Human Behavior
Human species are facing a threat to its survival, based on how we individually behave and keep up personal hygiene. It makes me believe; Are we still social species? Designed to live in groups!!
Social distancing is becoming the need of the hour. Wearing masks is becoming more mandatory than being a personal choice. They are acting as our first line of defense against contacting the harmful pathogens. Gone are the days, where you can fearlessly walk into a crowded supermarket or a shopping mall. There is an indistinct fear instilled in everybody’s mind. The constant bombardment of pandemic news, added with anxiety and fear has more insidious effects on our behavior.
The top 5 change in behaviors that I envisage at the end of lockdown:
Human Confidence: The pandemic has broken the trust and confidence of every individual. Focus on building confidence is of paramount importance at this point in time. Channels have to be built in such a way that there is no fear in what we do as part of our daily activities. It is important to create a balance such that the experience is still retained and made consistent while building confidence in the way we interact with the social world.
Moral Vigilance: Many studies show that disease threat increases moral vigilance in all the domains. Our behavior tends to disrupt especially when exposed to threats. The amount of rational reasoning becomes less and tends to be harsher when judging a breach. Say if you find a person wearing without masks or spitting in public places or tend to come closer to talk to you.
Being “Virtual” Human: The dawn of 2020 enforced the shift of the virtual beginning of everything. Our daily activities — such as gyms have turned out to be virtual workout sessions, virtual working, virtual meetings, virtual conferences, virtual coffee breaks, virtual luncheons, virtual gaming, chitchats, virtual ceremonies, and many more… we are definitely moving to an era of doing everything virtually.
Emotional Support and Companionship: Though at the end of the lockdown will ease up on business, most of the social aspects will remain intact, even if not more. This calls for even more emotional support for humans. Technology will be a boon to connect back and seek companionship and desired emotional support and at the same time keep up social distancing..but will all these tend to become an emotionless concrete jungle. Definitely not!! It’s important that we conform to social laws and at the same time stay emotionally connected.
Taste of Freedom: The lockdown has more or less curtailed the freedom of individuals. There is heightened anxiety and the mind is looking for a newer outlook. The mind and behavior must reframe the situation for something good rather than being sought on something which is out of control. There should be ways for humans to pursue the freedom of what they have been doing in the past — being social yet being virtual and conforming to their needs.
What do these changes in human behavior pave the way? What is a single common thread that runs across all the changes?
I will let the readers answer this. In this blog, we will deal with how the retail industry can take advantage of the above behavioral changes and explore new pathways to disrupt the industry and at the same time, conform to the needs of individuals.
Let's analyze this from two perspectives
- What is in for Consumers?
- What is in for Enterprises
For Consumers
While online shopping continues to exist, Virtual shopping with an in-store layout allows consumers to get a complete 360-degree view of the store. They can walk, explore, and discover new elements exactly as you would in the real world.
Let’s analyze a little deeper on how Virtual store layout affects the human mind and the overall shopping behavior.
Greater Immersive Experience: For consumers who have been hooked to their mobile or laptop screen with standard grid layouts, a virtual layout of their favorite shopping center or shop, feels more gratified to their senses. They walk into the store and forget their surroundings. It allows them to explore new things at home. A sense of regaining their freedom and boosts the confidence level.
Conforms to New Standards: The fear of pathogens or the fear of contamination is eliminated. They tend to stay safe and still venture out into their immersive world.
Deeper Collaboration: How about if you start tagging your family members and taking them to the virtual shopping world. Family members can be on the same device or a different device. More family time and collaborative shopping!!! This was something missing in the online shopping experience, virtual shopping can allow families to shop together, analyze and decide things collaboratively; especially buying gifts and home needs. A sense of emotional support and companionship.
Meet Friends: How about social integration? So you know if your friends are also shopping at the same time and at the same store. Typically, When you walk into a physical store and meet your friends, we tend to say Hi and sometimes we plan for an ad hoc meeting. Virtual shopping can provide a similar experience. Meet your friends and provide a fruitful shopping experience.
In-store Help: In an online shopping environment, you are left alone and sometimes tend to abort shopping just because of a lack of information. How about having instore help available when you want them? You can chat or talk to in-store help (salespersons in the virtual layout) to get more information on the products. It’s not your typical search; it’s a conversation!!
Unlimited Trials: Shopping is not fulfilled if the product is not trialed, especially clothes, cosmetics, and furniture. Virtual trials would become the norm. Try as many products at ease..no limitations of the number of products and more importantly at your private space and you can also check how it fits in your area.
The virtual trials would leap multifold if we add the following two ingredients
- Invite friends and family on need basis to comment on the new look. It provides emotional support and companionship. Get feedback from people whom you love instantaneously.
- Add Haptics into play, 360-degree feedback beyond usual visual and hearing senses. A sense of touch could help emotional connection and well being.
Contextual Help: Research again has proven that buying decisions are faster and easier when customers get all the information they want in one go!! Product information, reviews, options/colors and offers all available in one place. Users can gaze and get the information they want in one go!! Combined with in-store assistants, this is even more powerful!! It helps consumers stay informed and make intelligent buying decisions… TellMeMore is an app that was designed at ThoughtWorks. It aims at providing a better in-store product experience by overlaying information like book reviews, a number of pages, and comparative prices on/beside the product.
Look at the Communal Shopping concept by XR Enthusiasts at ThoughtWorkers
For the Enterprises
With the advent of XR, Enterprises would start embracing the technology for multiple reasons- the top one being the store being opened 24x7 with absolutely all products intact and never running out of supplies.. :)
Make Customer Journey Insightful: In Store customer journeys are something that is difficult to track. Enterprises were most often kept in dark what customers were doing when they visited the store. They were never able to map who the customer is, what are their likes and dislikes. Now with VR, this will be a subject of the past. Now Enterprises can exactly track who the customer is and identify where he has spent more time in the store, identify his buying habits, trigger points for buying, products that he has evaluated in the past, and identify influencers of his buying. Thanks to AI integration, these data can be processed in real-time and provoke the customer when he is actually in the store. Algorithms to determine “Propensity to buy” and “Propensity to Churn” can be instantaneously processed to make quicker buying decisions for customers.
Personalize VR Store layout based on Customer Types: Enterprises may not be able to design physical showroom layouts based on customer preferences and types. But now, they have the power to personalize the space based on who the customer is and their preferences. When they walk into the store, based on customer types (age, gender, and other demographic options) you can choose what layout and products appeal to them.
Proactive Offers: Offers and discounts typically lure customers. How about making proactive and personalized offers when customers are in the VR store? As customers walk into the VR store or the shopping lanes, proactive offers can be popped up to gain customer attention. Added with contextual information of the products, helps customers with informed buying decisions.
Integrated Financial Support: A lot of times buying decisions are deferred due to financial situations. Most of the enterprises have to tie up with financial institutions to ease up the process but fail to invoke at the right moment. With VR, when a customer explores the product, the availability of EMIs can be clubbed to let customers know the financial support in real-time. Customers can seek multiple options based on their needs and choose the one that best suits them.
Enable Support in Multiple Devices: Customers are already exposed to the technology, but at the moment limited only to gaming. However, not all consumers may have a Head Mounted Devices (HMD). The VR experience must not limit to HMD, it should cover a wide spectrum of devices to aid customer adoption. With high-quality VR experience of shopping available in multiple devices, Enterprises are going to see explosive growth in this space.
Conclusion
With every pandemic, Human race has evolved even better and stronger physiologically and psychologically. We try to cope with new mechanisms of defense and tend to pave new ways of technological inventions and adoptions. Adoption of new technologies becomes even more faster when they stay relevant to current crisis. Lifestyle changes are inevitable and change alone is constant. One such technology bloom that is paving our way of growth is the Extended Reality space, It puts human safety at the forefront and at the same time delivers the fundamental principles of customer experience — convenience, speed, relevance, collaboration and reliability. The rules of the game are changing, let’s gear up… The future is now!!!
