Imagine having your entire target audience engaging and experiencing your best seller products from the comfort of their homes in an unforgettable way? With augmented reality trickling into the retail shopping front, you can turn your consumers’ shopping experiences into more immersive, fun, and engaging ones.
The stream of augmented reality is trickling down every corner of businesses and economies. And as online retail is emerging as an innovative and fast-moving industry, augmented reality shopping has become one of its most important pillars.
The acceleration towards immersive digital shopping experiences is at an all-time high owing to the “try-before-you-buy” mindset. Augmented reality enables shopping brands to virtually contextualize any product before the actual purchase is made. This blog is here to update you on the top brands in the industry that have truly mastered this service.
Lowe’s
Lowe’s perfectly captured the ability to visualize a product before purchasing it with its augmented reality shopping experiences. By simply scanning your surroundings and dragging and dropping products the Lowe’s app enables customers to “…place lifelike, size-accurate items into their real-life spaces…”. This is a revolutionary step as it helps get a definitive idea of whether the product will fit, match, and blend with the surroundings.
The then Director of lab productions at Lowe’s Innovation Labs also mentioned – “VR and AR-enabled tools offer two key use cases: helping customers better navigate how they’ll use tools or whether products are physically compatible with their homes; and helping employees learn more quickly to offer more personalized expertise, and ultimately, add more value to the in-store experience.”
Kohl’s
Kohl’s goes one step further by integrating augmented reality shopping experiences with the social media application – Snapchat to create the Kohl’s AR Virtual Closet.
With a 36% increase in snaps sent with filter lenses, an 18% rise in time spent with sponsored lenses, and a 22% successful click-rate during the pandemic, Kohl intends to engage with the Millennial and Gen Z customer base.
The Snapchat Virtual Closet allows users to mix and match Kohl’s comfy, active, and athleisure wear in a virtual closet setting and visualize how the outfit would look. Kohl’s then Chief Marketing Officer, Greg Revelle, further stated –
“This virtual closet experience has given our audience a chance to experience the products they’re shopping for right now in a new way”.
Gucci
The global forecast report by Fortune Business Insights predicts the market value of virtual fitting rooms to spike from USD 2.4 billion today to USD 10 billion by 2027.
With this spike in mind, Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele released a pair of digital trainers that customers can virtually try on for an immersive and innovative experience. Integrating 3D visualizations of products, not only adds an element of fun for customers but also adds brand retention.
As a result of the AR experience, third-part posts about the Gucci sneakers drove 4-17 times more social media traction and engagement.
Sephora
Augmented reality integration by beauty brands is perhaps one of the most engaging and popular form of digital shopping. Research studies carried out by Perfect Corp. and Intage proved that augmented reality beauty tools make customers 1.6 times more likely to purchase beauty products as compared to those who do not use AR tools. Further, consumers spend 2.7 times more money on products with immersive AR beauty tools than those who do not use such tools.
Sephora jumped right in to capture the AR-led beauty industry by introducing features that let customers virtually try on makeup, find foundations that match their actual skin tone, and more through the Sephora Virtual Artist.
Nike
With a passionately action-oriented slogan – “Just do it”, how could Nike stay behind the game with immersive augmented reality shopping experiences.
According to Nike’s research team, 3 out of 2 people in the world are wearing the wrong size shoe, and almost “…half a million people complain about purchasing the wrong shoe size…” every year.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become even tougher for people to buy the right size of shoes online. And trying the shoes and seeing how it looks does not help in determining the right size. To resolve this issue, Nike released a new AR feature that helps measure the “…size, shape, and volume with accuracy within 2 millimeters…” for your foot. To further prove that this AR feature is no gimmick, Nike has decided to include this immersive AR experience at their physical stores too.
With additional features like a ‘guest mode’ that allows the Nike app user to scan the feet of friends and family members, Nike’s use of “…computer vision, data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and recommendation algorithms…” immersed with augmented reality have caught quite the eye of people across all age groups.
Porsche
Porsche’s Director of Marketing Communications in 2019, Oliver Hoffmann said – “Now, before making the purchase decision, everyone can virtually park their dream Porsche in their own driveway, marvel at it in their own living room, or show a photo-realistic version to their friends.”
With the new Porsche AR Visualizer app, you can select your Porsche model of choice, place it in any space like your garage, living room, backyard, etc., explore the colors, wheels, interiors, and technical features, all with just a click of a button!
This feature, introduced in 2018, has become even more helpful since the pandemic struck as it not only allows for customers like yourself to immerse themselves in the elite Porsche experience but also permits technicians and specialists thousands of kilometers from one another to get a hold of technical information with ease.
What’s Next?
With a large number of industry leaders paving a successful path toward more and more immersive augmented reality shopping experience, augmented reality is here to stay.
Imagine a world where you can simply scan codes in advertisements by brands and immediately be transported into a virtual amusement park or a virtual trial room or making your dream home project a virtual reality with a few clicks while sitting in your living room! Augmented reality is being adopted vigorously and passionately by retail brands and they do not plan to stop anytime soon.
If your brand has not already integrated AR shopping experience for its customers, shoot us an email or reach out to us for more information and a free consultation.