From retailtainment to the simplification of purchasing behaviors: how can AR/VR be used to innovate efficiently along the retail customer journey?

A couple of weeks ago, a really good friend of mine, who is head of retail at an international brand, and I were having drinks at a chic Parisian rooftop near the Marais district. The conversation slowly drifted towards our mutual favorite subject: the future of retail. My friend was mitigated about the subject: retail is a complex business that has grown more and more difficult in the digital age.

Traffic has dropped in stores and attracting new customers to retail spaces is not as easy as it used to be. Pure player brands have appeared, conquering the digital and ecommerce spheres with agile and viral approaches. And now, those pure players are moving to physical retail creating innovative in-store experiences. Communication, even, has become an issue: social media has accelerated the pace at which brands interact with their customers. Finding solutions to the content bulimia of millennials is proving to be quite tricky.

I raised that, in such times, innovation is the only solution. It is, obviously more complicated than that, as it is very difficult to innovate in an efficient and meaningful way for a brand. The story of the AR / VR innovation illustrates this quite well. Indeed, from Matrix to Black Mirror passing by the Ready Player One movie, the AR / VR technology has been heavily publicised and has been subtly integrated into pop culture. Surfing on this fame wave, some brands have rushed towards it to explore it as a new content platform and as a new bran- ding vector. A lot of them failed producing non-durable very expensive gadget prototypes.

Some of them, however have managed to use VR/AR to solution identified hurdles in their customers journeys. It is the case of IKEA that developed an AR app allowing to position furniture in a room. A precise customer pain point was identified - the impossibility to know how a room will look when filled with furniture purchased online - and AR was the best technology to bring a solution to this pain point. So, how can XR technologies be used to innovate efficiently along the retail customer journey?

There is only one answer: know your customer, what he aspires to, what he desires and how he shops, then use the incredible potential of AR / VR to create experiences that will be meaningful, useful, fulfilling and entertaining for him. It is all about mixing customer knowledge, technology, creativity and develop the customer’s cultural sensitivity through entertaining experiences.

Technology brings solutions. Art & culture bring meaning. Combined they create the power of leadership

Once you have a good grasp of how your customer behave, you can make the most of the AR/VR technology. You can follow the lead of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft who are all accelerating the adoption process of the AR / VR technologies, especially with new platform developments (Spark AR Studio, ARKit, ARCore…) and new ultra performing devices like the Hololens headset. They are also launching other multiple projects to spread the use of these new technologies. For instance, the [AR]T project by Apple brings together artists and curators, filmmakers and educators, in a collaborative ini- tiative that pushes the creative potential of augmented reality.

PHYSICAL RETAIL AS A TEMPLE OF ENTERTAINMENT.

Tomorrow, physical retail will become a temple of entertainment and will bring together the worlds of art, culture, fashion, technology and architecture. The pop-culture move- ment mentioned before will continue to accelerate this phenomenon. Brands will convert their “physical presence” into “entertaining spaces of living” that will aim to augment the customer’s journey through technology. They will offer him the possibility to create and personalise products in augmented reality, add context and see the final product in mixed reality. The product will be printed in 3D. This type of experience will give a special social dimension through the relation between the client and the “technical craftsman”which beco-mes an augmented personal shopper.

This may sound like science fiction to a lot of you, like it did to my friend head of retail, but it is, in reality a fatality. The continuous technological progress will continue to rattle tra- ditional shopping habits. The ability to embrace new technologies as new means of differentiation and of innovation will become key for brands in the upcoming years. One clear axis for retail is entertainment. Traditional shops will be progressively replaced by entertainment places of a new genre, coupling astutely technologies, architecture, design and high-end customers service. Those places will bend the line between the virtual and the real world and create a new way of seeing, living, consuming and desiring.

Massimo Moretti - Luxury & Innovation Consultant @Spirit&Spirit

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