Augmented Reality in Retail: From Mundane to Sublime

Augmented Reality is starting to look like the next technology on retailers’ radar screens.

Let’s start with the basics: What the heck IS augmented reality? Wikipedia’s general definition (before it lapses into words I cannot understand) is “a live or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose images are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery.” The most mundane example: the yellow “first down” lines seen on TV during American football broadcasts. In other words, the field of play is augmented by a digital image of the plane that must be crossed for the offense to get a first down. Okay, that’s simple enough.

Next up: Marketing. Beginning with the April edition, Calvin Klein Underwear will run augmented reality ads in GQ. As described in DMNews, readers can go to xmarkyourspot.com, hold up the ads and see videos of campaign models. Ironically, this extends and modernizes the voyeuristic nature of Calvin Klein Underwear’s brand identity. We’ve seen David Beckham and Mark Wahlberg larger-than-life in their underwear in Times Square, now we can see our fan faves up close and personal at our home computer screen.

Now let’s go to the next level: the Lego Store in Frisco, Texas, which shows us a very practical retail application. The customer holds a box containing a Lego kit up to an AR kiosk, and a 3-dimensional view of the finished, assembled model shows on top of the box. Rotate the box, and the 3-D image rotates too.

Moving right along, we’ll head to Japan, where the Takashimaya department store’s cosmetic department features an Augmented Reality cosmetic mirror. A camera scans the customer’s face, and recommendations for new products are made. Alternatively the customer can select from a variety of make-up types, eye glasses, lipsticks, and mascara.

These are the tip of the iceberg of applications we can expect. But there are other applications. Microsoft is adding some really interesting AR features into its Bing Maps. Bing will integrate with Flickr and users’ geo-tagged photos will be overlaid against the baseline to see what different places look like at different points in time. Why does this matter to retailers? Yet another way to confirm that a planogram re-set has been completed. Nothing proprietary, no magic - and it wouldn’t be awful if a customer looked at what was on sale on that shelf, either.

Finally, for a glimpse into the future, if you’ve got 7 minutes to spare, take a look at this “Sixth Sense Technology” video from TedIndia. The lines between the virtual and physical worlds really start to get blurry.

The bottom line: Augmented Reality is about to be assimilated into our retail lives. The rate of technology change isn’t slowing any time soon. And even as we embrace technologies to localize our assortments, optimize our prices and enhance our web sites, the consumer will be demanding more. Just like we can’t imagine what it was like to watch a football game without that first down marker, soon, we won’t be able to remember the time when we could only see a 2-dimensional picture of a Lego model, or when we had to go to Times Square to see our favorite model in his or her underwear.

I find myself saying to people often “It’s a great time to be me.” The rate of technology change in retail is mind-boggling, and it’s a lot of fun to watch it happening. I might not be quite so sanguine if I was still a retail CIO, but as an industry observer, it’s absolutely fabulous.

About the author: Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner of Retail Systems Research, a provider of insights and consulting services into business and technology challenges facing retailers. This is a copyrighted article that is cross-posted by permission of RSR.