Virtual Reality is no longer a novel exiting concept in the gaming world, it is reshaping traditional industries. From virtual real estate tours to healthcare surgeon simulations, VR’s has shown its transformative potential to revolutionize industries. By offering a three-dimensional simulated environment where users are immersed and able to interact with each other, the experience becomes unique, realistic and believable. This enhanced interaction and experience is extending to the retail sector as well.
Currently many stores are experimenting with AR in their stores. For example, L’óreal Paris has a make-up simulator for a virtual makeup try-on to prevent spillage of make-up products. Zara and Nike are exploring with enhance the customer experience (Sripathi, M., & Bhuvaneswari, T., 2022). But what is more interesting to consider for retailers, even with the advancements AR has brought to the retail experience, is the possibility of VR to eventually be a feasible replacement for the brick-and-mortar stores by switching from AR to VR.
One of the first adoptions of VR completely taking over the concept of the physical store is Buy+. Buy+ from Alibaba was released in 2016 during the annual Singles Day shopping festival and It allows customers to shop in virtual reality, pay with Alipay, and inspect items in 360 degrees from their homes (Feng, J., 2021). Research implies that VR shopping encourage impulsive shopping behavior and increases the hedonic shopping value (Alzayat, A., & Lee, S. H. M., 2021). Although this concept has not been revolutionizing yet, it is a step towards an futuristic immersive shopping experience. As VR technology enhances, it becomes more widely adopted and accessible for people, it has the potential to reshape the current retail industry.
What do you think is it just a matter of time before we get rid of the physical stores and replace it with virtual stores or will the physical stores always exist in our shopping habits?
References
Alzayat, A., & Lee, S. H. M. (2021). Virtual products as an extension of my body: Exploring hedonic and utilitarian shopping value in a virtual reality retail environment. Journal of Business Research, 130, 348-363. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296321001703
Feng, J. (2021). Research on the influence of VR scenarios in online shopping on consumer impulsive purchase behavior: The perspective of flow experience. International Journal of Business Marketing and Management, 6(8), 51-57.http://www.ijbmm.com/paper/Aug2021/8340436268.pdf
Sripathi, M., & Bhuvaneswari, T. (2022). Role of augmented reality (AR) in marketing. Emerging Trends in Business, Commerce & Management, 1.https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Devika-Prakash-4/publication/378858975_Increased_Use_of_UPI_Transactions_A_Comparative_Study_Before_and_After_the_Pandemic/links/65ee4041b1906066b28c2c6c/Increased-Use-of-UPI-Transactions-A-Comparative-Study-Before-and-After-the-Pandemic.pdf#page=5
