AI & VR in Retail: Transforming the Customer Experience
One can say today digital transformation is being widely-accepted and tending to transform the society, challenging business structures, and disrupting an entire market. It is also offering opportunities to suitably react to the ever-changing expectations of customers. Goldman Sachs foresees the demand for AR and VR in retail to reach $1.6 Bn by 2025.
The Virtual Imagination:
AR or VR can assist in overcoming the hassle aspect of shopping. For instance, if a consumer wants to purchase a car, he will visit 1.6 auto dealerships on an average which has gone down from five dealerships when compared to a few years ago. This is because customers term their experience tedious, challenging and technical. On the flipside owing to the factor that cars are becoming far too modernized they want someone with accurate knowledge to inform them about the features. VR can bridge this issue by offering virtual experience.
Trying on Products:
Both AR and VR can be useful in helping consumers see products in scenarios such as a furniture buyer feeling how a couch would look in their living room. There are stores which have come up with virtual fitting rooms that enable shoppers to virtually try on all of their clothing line available in the store using hand gestures. The same can be experienced in the comfort of a home through a PC’s built-in cameras and AR.
Virtual Browsing:
Although online stores are appealing they are less attractive when compared to the experience one gets in a brick and mortar store. A VR-generated store can assist customers virtually browse the store no matter where they are, and purchase the items they find. All the designers need is 360-degree panoramas that are accessible on most platforms — including smartphones and computers.
Designing Your Goods:
In today’s world custom orders are diminishing as they take up a lot of time and it is entirely dependent on the customer’s imagination. AR and VR assists in overcoming that hurdle by producing virtual versions of the desired product. For example, Nike’s Makers’ Experience coalesce augmented reality, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things as well as digital signage or videowalls to facilitate a customized design to emerge on sneakers and customers can pick the same up after few hours.
Offering Product Info in Context:
Lists of specifications and features can be tedious and mind-boggling. When such data is delivered in context, it makes a better impression: the shopper picks up and browses a product, then sees detailed information on the benefits of the part they are viewing which is much more likely to reverberate.
According to Forbes, the tomorrow of AR and VR in retail seems to boil down into two major use categories. On the one hand, AR lets somebody use itself to answer questions such as, “What will it look like in my home? What will it look like on me?” VR, on the other hand, is discovering a home in business uses such as shelf assortment and layout, store design as well as in contextual store walks and real-time store presentation, which permits executives to see data in the connection of how the store looks, rather than merely as a chart or list of numbers. Using these technologies not only is their customer satisfaction but the experience that the technologies offer are making life easier for the consumers. The customers can realize how each thing may feel or look just by sitting in the comfort of their homes, cubicles or coffee shops.
