The Four Definitive Use Cases For AR And VR In Retail

Any application of AR or VR in retail needs to fit into the customer shopping journey. Every customer goes through some manifestation of that journey, from awareness to exploration, to selection and purchase, and even post-purchase service and advocacy. Sometimes those steps are long, drawn-out, and iterative, and sometimes consumers employ shortcuts, like when they use brand awareness and trust to focus on “their” brand of product.Long or short, it’s still a journey, and retailers’ jobs are to support those journeys when and where they might happen. Thus, it’s most helpful to think of AR and VR for retail in terms of where they fit within the shopper journey. So far, that means four distinct opportunities. AR is the go-to engagement method of choice when it comes to product and category exploration. A label on a product on a shelf can only do so much to convey product and brand information, vs. AR, which can easily tap into a wealth of digital information online and bring it to life as an overlay on a product or on the label itself. Some recent examples.