March 4, 2019
Virtual reality is making inroads in the retail industry, at the same time as more and more companies are realizing the powerful potential of VR for training. Here are some of the most recent use cases of VR in enterprise, all of which, when it comes down to it, are customer-facing applications of the technology. The following is evidence of digital disruption ramping up beyond work instructions and collaborative design, to directly impact the products and services that consumers experience everyday:
ADT
In a recent mailer campaign to convey the importance of professional alarm monitoring services, ADT sent out Google Cardboard-like VR headsets that put recipients into a simulated life-threatening situation. Noting a lack of awareness among homeowners around what actually happens during a fire, ADT worked with Harte Hanks to create a VR experience accessible on YouTube that would drive home the potential side effects of carbon monoxide, the physical obstacles that can prevent you from escaping, and other elements of a house fire.
Placing a phone in the viewer sent by ADT, you find yourself in a bedroom filled with smoke. You’re immersed in a mother’s fear and disorientation as she’s awoken by a call from ADT and goes to find her daughter, who refuses to leave without her dog. When the two go downstairs, you see an inferno coming from the kitchen, and then the house loses power. The experience is raw and definitely more powerful than a pamphlet, but at the end of the day it is a marketing campaign to not only change the batteries in your smoke detector every year but also buy ADT’s services.
Walmart
The retailer is expanding its use of VR beyond employee training to the customer experience, making novel use of its 4,000+ physical stores. Walmart subsidiary Spatial& and DreamWorks created a VR experience based on the new “How to Train Your Dragon” movie that is now touring 40 Walmart store parking lots via 50-foot tractor trailers. In this way, Walmart is able to play host to exclusive VR experiences (featuring VR-powered chairs) and give the masses access to VR overnight—a technology that’s still too expensive for most and that Spatial& views as the future of retail marketing.
By working VR into stores, Walmart and other retailers can cut back on large displays and market products in interactive ways. For instance, shoppers might use a VR headset to put a tent together to test out camping gear or try stowing a stroller in an overhead airplane bin before buying. This is essentially “try before you buy” but inside the store itself. VR can even bring products to life, for example by enabling shoppers to virtually visit the vineyard that produces Walmart wine.
Royal Mail
Mailman vs. dog: It’s a classic TV trope that Royal Mail says prevents postal workers from taking anti-dog attack training seriously. In addition to the cartoon vision of the dog chasing the mailman, the group environment in which this training is traditionally held hurts its effectiveness, as trainees don’t want to be seen taking it seriously. Over the years, Royal Mail has tried videos, brochures, slogans and posters to reduce the number of dog attacks on its employees; now it’s turning to VR.
With around 150,000 postal workers delivering to some 30 million addresses, Royal Mail sees around 2,275 dog attacks per year. Injured employees are unable to finish their routes, which severely impacts customer experience. Looking for a way to isolate the training and eliminate the “banter culture” around dog attacks, Royal Mail began using VR: Now, trainees use smartphones inserted into headsets to experience potential dog attack scenarios, select different actions and receive feedback on their choices. The result: Many units haven’t reported a single dog attack since adopting the VR training system in November 2018. The training was also inexpensive for Royal Mail to pilot nationally.
Kellogg
Accenture Extended Reality, Qualcomm and Kellogg recently teamed up to pilot an eye-tracking VR headset for retail merchandising. The idea is to enable companies to do market research faster, cheaper and on a larger scale. Accenture developed the solution based on a Qualcomm VR reference design headset powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, using eye-tracking tech from Tobii, eye-tracking data analytics from Cognitive3D, and mixed reality software from InContext Solutions. By tracking where a user looks while moving through a full-scale virtual store, walking down virtual aisles, picking up products and placing items into his cart, retailers can determine the best way to stock shelves.
Brands spend a lot of time, money and effort figuring out optimal product placement but are usually limited in the data they’re able to collect (online surveys and in-home user tests can only go so far). Eye-tracking in VR provides richer and more accurate behavioral data than traditional testing. You can observe what users are looking at, for how long, in a realistic shopping scenario; and expand testing to more geographically dispersed participants (mobile VR). In fact, the VR eye-tracking solution has led to insights that directly contradicted some of Kellogg’s prior assumptions, resulting in an 18% increase in the brand’s sales during testing.
