According to the World Apparel and Footwear Network, although the retail industry is a typical traditional industry, the story of the retail industry has not been interrupted, e-commerce, O2O, new retail, smart retail, and so on. Recently, a new concept has been added: retail AR. With the momentum of AR/VR, retail AR has been pushed to a higher level, but is this a good story?
Retail consumption does have the potential to be the first wave of beneficiaries of the AR dividend
According to a recent digital retail research report released by Goldman Sachs, video games, live events, video entertainment, healthcare, real estate, retail, education, engineering, and military are among the top nine areas of VR/AR applications.
Which retail scenes may be the first to enjoy the bonus
1. Online shopping: beauty, clothing, shoes, etc.
In the previous activity of “Sweeping Cats†in Alibaba, according to statistics, “Tmall†was scanned 1.6 billion times, of which AR was out of the limelight.
Everyone abroad is chasing me and huging AR. For example, in 2016, Magic Leap showed a demo about AR online shopping, from measurement space, purchase, preview to order placement in the AR environment.
Lowe's online store in the US home building chain retailer provides customers with Tango-equipped mobile phones. The dedicated app in the mobile phone can help customers navigate the products.
Nike has been experimenting with AR devices developed by SmartPixels to help users customize their sports shoes.
For example, Sephora has launched a number of stores with AR facilities around the world. Customers only need to stand in the virtual try-up mirror Tap and Try to scan the barcode of the product to see their makeup effect in front of the screen. According to the survey agency, sales of Sephora stores using the “Try Makeup Mirror†increased by an average of 31%. And AR directly improved the buyback rate and return rate.
In addition, Estee Lauder, L'Oreal and French beauty retailer Sephora have also entered the beauty fashion + AR, such as L'Oreal Group announced that it will cooperate with AR beauty app "play beauty makeup", users can experience L'Oreal's makeup items through the app. Estee Lauder also launched a trial feature based on AR technology on its website.
2, family improvement: furniture, home, etc.
Whether it's releasing ARkit or this launch of iphone x, IKEA is one of the protagonists. Through ARKit's AR technology, consumers can virtually arrange furniture on their mobile phones, and they can also purchase furniture directly through the app.
In fact, as early as 2013, IKEA launched an interactive product catalog that allows users to see how their furniture looks in their own home when they turn on the camera.
There is also a “real home†shopping guide APP called “AR Homeâ€. This app combines AR technology and mobile hardware. Users can use it to enter the home warehouse at any time and choose the favorite home (table, sofa, curtain, Chairs, etc.) can be placed in any place in your home, and can accurately measure the actual size of the home, the degree of reduction is close to 100%.
3. Automotive industry
According to media exposure, developers have previously created a car AR experience using the developer preview ARKit tool in iOS 11. It is a detailed Mercedes-Benz 3D rendering model with interactive interior space and the ability to change different colors for the car. The car model can be held unsteadily on the ground, allowing the user to virtually walk around and view different angles.
The domestic auto OEMs Changan, FAW, GAC, etc. all have in-depth cooperation with Chess Technology, which is a “automobile digital retail service provider†that uses a variety of popular visualization technologies to digitally present vehicles and help automakers. Strengthen the pre-sales product experience, and at the same time graft the pre-sales experience to its self-developed back-end DMS platform to help sales consultants in the distribution store collect submarine clue data in real time.
For example, all the car purchase preferences and personalized data when consumers look at the car on the content side can be fed back to the dealer in real time, helping the sales consultant to understand the consumer's intention and personality preferences for the first time, and immediately follow up and start sales. Chess Technology is also a technical service provider that uses ARkit to build Lamborghini AR Showroom.
Volkswagen manufacturers are currently using their own VR application platform: innoactive, which is said to gradually apply AR technology to future training. In addition, at the Guangzhou Auto Show Guangzhou Auto Show booth last year, the car home also launched the AR car service.
Why is it possible?
1. Close to the money, it is easier to commercialize
From the perspective of cost-benefit, AR technology costs are not high. A complete set of VR devices is close to 100,000, but the most expensive AR devices are far lower than the price of VR devices, and now only need a mobile phone to get the AR experience. At the same time, the AR technology research and development threshold is low. For example, AR company Blippbuilder has issued an AR design platform, and even users without coding experience can create AR technology on it.
Secondly, in life applications, AR is more likely to combine with traditional commercial formats because of its strong realism and small modeling workload. For example, the canvas sports shoe brand Converse developed a sports shoe sampler app, and customers can see the effect of wearing various shoes in their own homes, thus saving time in the store.
Once again, in the moment, the user's tolerance for AR retail is higher. Everyone has a try and experience AR dressing and car selection. Because they pay a relatively low cost, they don't need to buy equipment like VR.
More importantly, these are usually paid by the business owner. Competing for such a fierce current business opportunity, how dare they lag behind to try AR.
2. There is a huge “improvement†demand in the retail industry.
For example, clothing e-commerce, everyone chooses clothes online, often buy back to not fit or wear it does not look good. Beauty is also, I don’t know if I will look good after I put it on.
The automotive industry is even worse. As the car technology CEO Chen Zhaoxing said, the traditional sales model is mainly based on the “traditional means†of slash-and-burn, the marketing and sales costs are not low, but the conversion rate from marketing to sales is extremely low, and it is rarely available to the store. To effectively collect customers, the dealers are miserable.
Secondly, they were impacted by new auto companies. For example, new energy vehicles such as Tesla and Weilai only sell cars online. The showroom is only used to display the brand concept and put 1-2 flagship models. Although abroad, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Cadillac, and Hyundai are all engaged in digital retailing.
The future dealerships they envision will become smaller and smaller, and even there will be no cars in the store. All pre-sales experiences will be put online, digitally completed, and finally returned to the offline test drive before delivery. (The big trend here is: as car consumption becomes more mature, the demand for test drive is slowly weakening. As a standardized industrial consumer goods, the trend of car consumption will gradually approach mobile phones, as a kind of Quasi-fast consumer goods, and this is the inevitable in the context of consumer upgrades and digital payments.) And now both car manufacturers and dealers are looking forward to better digital marketing solutions.
3, Apple and other companies intentionally tilt
The giants are also the first to force these areas. For example, in early 2016, Apple acquired the company Flyby Media, which studies technologies such as indoor positioning and navigation, drone auto-navigation, driverless cars, and head-mounted display system tracking. In October 2016, there was another news that Apple was testing AR-based car navigation and autopilot software.
In addition, at this conference, Apple focused on the AR application of IKEA APP.
This undoubtedly provides a very clear signal to industry practitioners, and other practitioners will inevitably not follow suit and bet on retail scenes.
However, some people may have doubts about these consumption scenarios, but I would like to ask if the house is heavier than the car. At present, the chain can sell a house at a street shop that is less than 50 square meters to help the buyer make a decision (understand, choose, The price communication is all in a small store, and the most specific viewing room is taken outside to see). The car is more standardized and lighter than the room, which will inevitably lead to the upgrade of the sales method. The AR-centric digital sales solution is undoubtedly an intriguing direction.
Don't forget to make up these short boards before the full outbreak
Let's not talk about the retail industry itself. The problem of AR is enough for practitioners. Before the full popularity of retail AR, at least these systemic shortcomings need to be completed.
First, the infrastructure of the AR underlying system needs to be accelerated and improved.
If AR retail is erupting on a large scale, the prerequisite is that application developers will enter the AR application development on a large scale. This is a great challenge for Apple and Google (or even Facebook). Corresponding AR platforms and development kits, and they need to be built on the infrastructure of the underlying systems.
Second, everyone is looking forward to more powerful sensors and chips
Currently on mobile phones, we have been able to achieve 3D modeling, machine learning applications and coherent rendering, but they usually consume a lot of CPU / GPU resources, which will lead to increased device temperature and battery consumption. If you want to move these functions to the AR device, custom sensors and chips are the best solution (such as Microsoft's holographic chip), but I am afraid I need to wait for it.
Third, in the user interaction, there is still a distance between virtual and reality.
This includes both real-time interactions between people and content, such as the suitability of people and clothing when selecting clothes, as well as in-device interactions between people, and the need to perform real-time interactions in the virtual space based on the content of people. This is a big challenge for technical computing power and data transmission. At present, long lines behind various AR devices are transmission restrictions. If you want to remove the cable, the current technical means WiFi can not afford such a large data level. If you want to wait until LiFi is mature, you have to wait until 2020.
In addition, the current AR technology can not restore all the interactive scenes in real life. For example, for the tactile and olfactory experience of some products, you can use AR to try different colors of Converse shoes to wear them yourself, but you can't know if they will get stuck or know the actual feeling of walking. Because most AR presentations and applications are still a one-man show, there is still a gap between the real “what you see†and the “enhanced immersive experienceâ€, as Jeremy Bergstein of Science Project says: “VR and AR shopping is still not enough for you. The same feeling of actually trying on clothes is not enough to make you judge whether the clothes fit."
This also applies to the AR+ beauty mode. At present, most of the AR test makeup functions on the market are only for lipstick, eye shadow, blush and other make-up. The consumer experience can only be limited to the overall effect of color on the skin, but can not feel the durability, product texture, Real effects such as skin feel. Of course, AR technology can't help consumers to complete the use and selection of daily skin care products.
Fourth, in the scene penetration, it is also testing whether the business owner will pay the bill
The retail format is mostly provided by the business owner to the consumer AR experience, but a very important deciding factor for the business owner to choose AR is whether AR can change its existing problems and improve sales. They are not charities but for profit. of.
For example, in the automotive industry, whether auto companies can fully promote AR depends on whether AR can strengthen the emotional connection between consumers and cars, and continue to bring new customers; whether it can help car brands and their dealers to achieve accurate customer arrival, And complete the sales conversion.
The traditional car sales model makes the camp and sales highly separated, so whether it is the AR car of the car home or the AR digital retail showroom of the car technology, the car factory and the dealers realize the camp and sales. The core advantage is not a simple AR experience, but on the one hand to provide consumers with a high-quality, convenient car experience, on the other hand to optimize service quality and upgrade sales for manufacturers and distributors!
If the solution provided by the relevant service provider only uses the content features of AR to improve the user experience, but does not help car manufacturers and dealers to increase the store head collection and accurate sales lead collection, it can only be a temporary carnival.
In short, AR retail will be a new industry revolution, but before the outbreak, all participants need to truly understand the retail, but also to control the core capabilities and reduce costs. This test is not only the precipitation of technology, but more An understanding of the various retail formats, especially the understanding of the transition between prospects and customers.
For more exciting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing and footwear network.
Newborn High Chairs,Baby High Chair With Wheels,Baby High Chair 3 In 1,Children Dining Table
Zhejiang Lamon Technology Inc. , https://www.chairesbaby.com