A century ago, being a successful retailer was as good as knowing your customer. Shopkeepers knew everything about their best customers like their taste & preferences and what they bought previously. As mass merchants started dominating, personal relationship with customers changed, allowing online retailers with access to customer tracking and ad-targeting software to take retail to a whole new level of efficiency and accuracy.
With the success of online retail taking the industry by a storm, new technologies like Augmented Reality have started emerging. On the one hand, we saw Pokemon GO that opened up millions of users to possibilities of AR. On the other hand, we are expected to see sales, marketing and retail sectors increase growth in AR spending which may surpass consumer spending by 2021.
A research report from IDC depicts that AR spending is expected to increase more than 113% per year in the future. Apart from this, sales, manufacturing, and retail sectors are all seeing increased growth in AR spending and may even surpass consumer spending by 2021.
Let’s look at some of the ways AR is already transforming the retail and manufacturing industries.
AR in Stores
AR filters will customize the in-store experience for shoppers by providing a level of service and engagement that is beyond the scope of online retail. Mixed reality mannequins with your exact body type is the latest technology with a shopping experience that holds the potential of making retail a major destination again.
In the coming years, consumers will start seeing more augmented experiences while shopping. So how are retailers using AR to improve the shopping experience?
Give customers more information about products.
There are applications that make shopping more informative and easier. With this app, customers can compare prices and features by pointing their phone at the shelf. At the same time, someone browsing the electronics department could easily see peripherals that are compatible with their operating system.
Allow shoppers to try before they buy.
AR allows for shoppers to try out products before buying them. Retailers go to great lengths to allow shoppers to try out their products in-store. But what about the furniture store or the make up stores.
Mobile applications can be build that turns user’s smartphone camera into mirrors, allowing them to see the product virtually.
For a makeup brand, users have the luxury to match colors and scan labels, try on various products and share their results on social media platforms. It instills confidence in the customers to buy products without visiting the physical location to try the product.
Other experiments with AR involve in-store mirrors that allow shoppers to see the clothes they are trying on in different colors thereby cutting down trips to the fitting room.
Provide personalized offers.
Using the insights learned from predictive analytics, retailers can use customer data and machine learning algorithms to generate personalized offers tailored to individual shoppers based on their unique profiles and needs.
Retailers can offer targeted ads based on past behaviors and patterns instead of generic display or discounts everyone sees. For example- a woman who recently bought a cold cream from a local store may get a special offer on a second bottle of cream at a discount.
Augmented reality has tremendously transformed the retail industry. Copper Mobile is a software development company with extensive experience in augmented reality development. If you wish to stay ahead of the curve and develop your own AR/VR App, contact us.
