Learn About Augmented Reality in Retail

Augmented Reality offers significant benefits for your business, such as enhancing your marketing strategy and improving the customer experience. It's a tool that many sectors, such as retail, have successfully adopted.

Augmented reality (AR) combines elements of the physical world with virtual ones to create a richer, more engaging visual experience. It may sound similar to virtual reality (VR), but it's not. In VR, users are completely immersed in a virtual world. AR inserts digital content into the physical environment, and users move through both worlds simultaneously.

AR works with mobile phones, tablets, augmented reality glasses, or mixed reality headsets. First, this mobile device uses cameras and sensors that detect the real environment. This allows them to then overlay graphics, images, videos, or any other virtual object onto the user's view. This data can be contextual, providing details about objects or places in the real world.

Augmented reality is used in a variety of industries, from gaming to education, e-commerce, medicine, and manufacturing.

You may be interested in reading What is Business Process Management?

Mobile games use the phone's camera to superimpose virtual characters onto the real world, such as the popular Pokémon Go. There are also mapping apps that display directions and points of interest in real time. In the design world, it allows users to visualize how furniture or other objects would look in a home. In medicine, AR can guide and inform surgeons in real time.

Augmented reality has been spreading, and its development is maturing as new types of technologies and software are introduced to the market.

Different types of augmented reality

There are several types of augmented reality that can benefit your business. This depends on how the digital elements are superimposed on the real environment and how users interact with them.

1. Marker-based augmented reality: Visual markers, such as QR codes or images, are used as references to overlay digital elements. When a device's camera captures a marker, the augmented reality app recognizes that marker and places virtual objects relative to it. This allows for more precise and predictable use in specific environments.
2. Markerless Augmented Reality: Digital elements are superimposed on the real world without the need for visual markers. Environmental characteristics, such as color patterns or shapes, are leveraged to track and place virtual objects in real space. This makes the experience more dynamic and adaptable to different environments.
3. Location-based augmented reality: AR uses GPS and other sensor data to link virtual elements with real-world locations. It's common in mobility apps, travel guides, and games.
4. Object-based augmented reality: Real-world objects are recognized to overlay data and provide information. For example, an AR application could recognize a product in a store and provide pricing, customer reviews, or promotional content.
5. Face-based augmented reality and gesture detection: Users' faces and gestures are recognized. It's used in face filter applications or to create avatars that can follow users' gestures.
6. Mobile Augmented Reality: Phones and tablets take advantage of cameras, sensors, and touchscreens. This is one of the most accessible and popular forms of AR, as many AR apps are available in app stores.
7. Augmented reality in glasses and headsets: This offers a more immersive experience, where digital elements are projected into the user's field of vision.

These are some of the most common types of augmented reality. However, AR is advancing and inspiring new approaches and applications that are constantly developing.

You can also read Why to Integrate a Chatbot with WhatsApp Business

Augmented reality in retail

Is your company in the retail sector? This may interest you. Augmented reality in retail significantly improves the customer shopping experience. This helps increase sales and also makes in-store service more efficient.

1. Virtual Fitting Rooms: Customers can try on clothes virtually. They can see how a garment fits, change colors or styles, and make more informed purchasing decisions.
2. Visualize Products: Customers can see products in 3D or their surroundings before purchasing. This is especially useful for furniture, household items, and other large products.
3. Store Navigation: AR applications can help customers find products within a store using real-time GPS. This makes navigation easier and saves time.
4. Contextual Data: Retailers can provide product information using AR. Customers can scan labels and receive reviews, technical data, tips, and promotions.
5. Interactive In-Store Experiences: AR engages customers and users through games, treasure hunts, or virtual tours.
6. Advertising: Retailers can use AR to create ads that are triggered when customers scan them with their smartphones. This increases customer engagement and interest in products or promotions.
7. Customize products: With AR, customers can design their own products before placing an order. This is something often offered by sneaker or jewelry brands, for example.
8. Train employees: Retailers can use AR to train their sales staff. Employees can learn about products and processes through AR applications, allowing them to provide better customer service.
9. Analyze and collect data: AR can also collect valuable data on how customers shop. This can help retailers better understand customer preferences and inform their product and marketing strategies.

Examples of AR in the retail sector

In the retail sector, several brands and companies have already used augmented reality to improve the customer experience and increase sales.

1. L'Oreal developed a series of real-time makeup try-on apps that leverage customers' mobile cameras.
2. IKEA launched the IKEA Place app, which uses AR to allow customers to visualize furniture and household items before purchasing.
3. Sephora implemented the Virtual Artist feature on its mobile app. Customers can try different makeup products on their own faces using their phone's camera. They can also receive suggestions.
4. Lowe's, a home improvement chain, uses AR apps to help customers navigate the store and find products. It also allows customers to visualize how products would look in their homes before purchasing.

The youth sneaker brand used AR in an in-store advertising campaign. Customers could scan ads with their smartphones to view and play videos and games about Converse products.

Augmented reality, enhanced experience

Augmented reality is maturing and offering increasing applications across more industries. In the retail sector, it benefits both retailers and customers.

On the one hand, it improves the customer experience by allowing for a more immersive and engaging shopping experience. It also facilitates decision-making by helping customers try products before purchasing. It also optimizes store space and reduces product search time. For all these reasons, AR improves customer loyalty and helps them make faster and more confident purchasing decisions.

On the other hand, stores can stand out in the marketplace. AR can gather valuable data on how customers shop and what their preferences are. In conclusion, AR has become an important tool for marketing and sales strategies in modern retail. More developments in this area are likely to emerge very soon.