By Mark Hardy, InContext Solutions
If you’re feeling like today’s retail industry has become more cutthroat than ever, you’re not alone. With competition from Amazon and the emergence of direct-to-consumer startups, brick-and-mortar retailers have to be extremely savvy about how they spend and invest to maximize profits and avoid costly flops.
And while technology is the force behind many of these changes, it’s also driving much-needed innovation. The latest new kid on the technology block, virtual reality, can actually make your life a lot easier — and boost your bottom line.
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Think you can’t afford the upfront investment necessary to use VR in your store? Good news: many of today’s VR platforms are inexpensive, run in the cloud, and can be operated from pretty much any computer.
Here’s a look at four ways investing in virtual reality can help grow profits and efficiency at your store:
1. Make decisions based on data. Online retailers are obsessed with data — and with good reason. Tracking how their customers behave lets them make changes that encourage more purchases and improve satisfaction. With VR, brick-and-mortar stores can now compete. While you might not be able to track every item that catches a shopper’s eye, you can (digitally) watch how they interact with a variety of in-store concepts through testing done in hyper-realistic virtual simulations — and then iterate your concepts based on what drives the most sales, penetration, or any other relevant metric. In one example, a client of ours was prepared to purchase 22,000 complex display cases for a new store layout. After testing with our VR tools, they discovered that customers actually reacted more favorably to the less expensive model. The discovery saved them $40 per unit, for a total of $880,000.
2. Iterate and improve faster. Conceptualizing and evaluating new in-store concepts takes far less time with VR than it does in the real world, and is much less expensive. That’s because there’s no need for costly mock store centers, and no need to fly in executives in order to get their input. With VR, concepts can be viewed, manipulated, and evaluated within a simulation, and brand-new products don’t need to be prototyped in order to be visible in the context of a store. Testing is cloud-based, so real shoppers can shop the virtual environment without leaving their homes. This all leads to faster turnaround, lower costs, and — perhaps more importantly — greater confidence in new concepts before they go to market.
3. Remove silos and improve communication among teams. Traditional methods for changing a store’s layout require buy-in (and feedback) from many stakeholders. The process of testing, communicating feedback and iterating can take months and be frustratingly inefficient. But with a VR platform, multiple parties can collaborate in real time, sharing notes and tweaking displays until everyone’s thoughts align.
4. Become a Destination. Marketing by offering VR experiences at your store can be a differentiator. Shoppers who engage with your products through an enjoyable virtual experience, such as a game or interactive challenge, will associate that enjoyment with your brand, which we all know is helpful for the bottom line. Even better? Now is the perfect time to start offering such an experience, while it still sets you apart from the crowd.
Virtual reality is coming into its own as a widely available tool for retailers. With today’s VR software and systems, it’s a technology that can help you regain a foothold over competitors — without breaking the bank. VR is truly a technology that’s worth the investment.
Mark Hardy is CEO of InContext Solutions, the leading provider of cloud-based virtual reality solutions for retailers and brands. Use of InContext Solutions’ flagship ShopperMX™ platform helps brands and retailers build, visualize and test in-store concepts within hyper-realistic retail simulations — enabling more immersive, cost effective and faster go-to market strategies.
