Augmented Reality in Retail - Blog 1.0

This blog post is part of a three-part series exploring the relationship between retail and AR, and the ways Capitola can help enhance your customers’ experience and accelerate your journey into the future of retail.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an enhanced version of reality where live direct or indirect views of physical real-world environments are augmented with superimposed computer-generated images over a user's view of the real-world, thus enhancing their perception of reality.

Complicated? Yes, especially to older generations, but the majority of you reading this are probably using AR every day through, well, Snapchat. The fascinating facet of AR is that it can be applied to so many different disciplines, from social media to healthcare. There is evidently a heap of potential for how AR can change the way retailers advertise and enhance their customers’ experience. 

Let’s start with some stats:

·      61% of companies currently do not use AR

·      20% are not familiar at all with AR

·      and another 20% have plans to adopt AR in the next year

The key to changing these statistics is creating awareness. The most popular gaming app last year was Pokémon Go: everyone and their dog was hitting the streets to hunt down Pokémon. What was the fundamental USP of the app? You guessed it, Augmented Reality. 

While AR has been around since the late 1960s, it is still unknown to the vast majority of both consumers and retailers, and when the use of an alternative reality is even considered, major technology companies often opt for Virtual Reality - partly due to its truly immersive experience which doesn’t employ real-world elements like AR does. Sony and Facebook are an example of that.

However, AR is more applicable to the retail experience. Why? If you want shoppers to trust you and stick with you in the long-term, a good product and consistency is key in achieving that. VR – which can be a great tool for many means – makes this quite difficult because of its most intrinsic value: it’s virtual. It does not physically exist. So how can you gain a customer’s trust when you don’t have anything tangible to showcase? Retail and shopping are real and AR is the best and most strategic way to take a step forward from the traditional shopping experience while still being deep-rooted in tangibility.

VR in retail has a long way to go, but AR is now.

IKEA, Converse, Lacoste and Charlotte Tilbury are all massive companies in their respective industries, and have all used AR for their businesses through in-store mirrors to apps. However, none of these AR experiments have become a permanent fixture in any of these companies' marketing strategies, suggesting something is wrong. 

Firstly, AR features so far have generally been integrated in these retailers’ stand-alone apps, which consumers failed to download. The most likely reason for this is minimising its risk factor in terms of cost, reputation and brand, but it is also likely that the AR technology integrated in these apps didn’t have enough depth to warrant a standalone app.

In the next part of our blog series, we’ll discuss the future, trying to give our answer to the following questions:

·      How do companies make AR more appealing to consumers?

·      How do they make AR worthwhile? 

·      And how can it transform the retail climate? 

As an innovation driven digital agency, Capitola specialises in AR, VR, and MR. We want to transform your business by using these technologies to enhance your marketing capabilities, increase customer loyalty, and revolutionise the retail industry for the future.

If you have any questions or would like to get in touch regarding business opportunities, please contact Simon van Cleeff on +31 6 81 20 81 05 or simon@capitola.nl.