Commerce Gets an Immersive Makeover with Real-time, 3D Shopping

There has been a lot of speculation that e-commerce, already lauded for its ability to deliver personalization, could deliver a more three-dimensional experience as well. That day is here, with retailer giant Walmart employing what is called immersive commerce — combining virtual reality with 3D visualizations and gamification.

Walmart’s real-time, 3D shopping experience was recently explored in MIT Sloan Management Review. Social media has become a leading form of commerce interaction, which Walmart recognizes is a way to reach younger shoppers, state the article’s authors, Mary Lacity and Remko Van Hoek. “So far, the company has created immersive commerce experiences across three VR platforms, prioritizing learning and experimentation as its primary objectives.”

See also: Harnessing Real-Time Analytics in Hyperlocal eCommerce

Real-world Real-time Benefits

Based on lessons learned from the Walmart experience, Lacity and Van Hoek make the following recommendations:

1. Align immersive commerce strategy with business strategy. “The marketing team focused on the company’s strategic priorities in fashion, beauty, and home collections for the launch of Walmart Realm and identified social influencers who aligned with the brand. Building on insights gained from these early investments, Walmart could further expand the platform by inviting affiliate marketers and content creators to develop and manage their own storefronts.”

2. Create more than just a digital twin of a physical location. “Some retailers may see creating virtual stores that resemble physical stores as the simplest solution because current customers are already familiar with store layouts. Walmart, however, wanted to create imaginative destinations that would give the next generation of shoppers reasons to visit frequently. For example, the retailer created a virtual aquarium — where users are in the water — that would have been impossible at a real physical location. As a Walmart representative put it: ‘Our goal is to shorten the distance between inspiration and commerce.’”

3. Design an immersive architecture built to grow as technology changes. Immersive commerce experiences are multi-channel — through web browsers, mobile apps, or VR headsets, Lacity and Van Hoek point out. While “VR headsets offer the deepest level of immersion,” Walmart has not moved in this direction yet, but is “is using technology that can be ported to VR headsets later, as adoption of wearable devices grows.” Still, “the front end looks futuristic to the visitor,” they add. “The back end is built on the retailer’s established technology, for security’s sake.”

4. Leverage new analytics. An immersive commerce operation needs “strong analytics capabilities, including new metrics that are specific to virtual worlds,” Lacity and Van Hoek advise. Walmart’s marketing team “analyzed traditional social media metrics, like the number of daily visitors and average time spent in the experiences, but it also needed to build new analytics capabilities specific to immersive commerce.” Immersive commerce metrics Walmart is using include percentage and frequency of visitors who change the appearance of their avatars; number of customers who try virtual items on their avatars before purchases; visitor engagement points; and the effectiveness of portals.

5. Seek continual input from the community. For example, Walmart has featured more than 300 creators and developers and actively engages with 34,000 members on one of its channels.