Virtual reality merchandising
February 14, 2019
February 14, 2019
Where is that just-right place on the retailer’s shelf for my company’s product? And what product assortment should I offer? Consumer brands and retailers invest considerable time and money seeking the answer and working together to agree on the optimal placement.
Traditional approaches to this kind of market research have limitations. For example, you could build an expensive physical store environment and invite focus groups to “shop” the shelves and then fill out a survey; or, you could create a “virtual” store on a computer screen to replicate the shopping experience, or mail products for consumers to try at home and then ask them questions in an online survey.
We see a better way through VR and eye-tracking. Recently, as Kellogg’s prepared to launch a new product, Pop Tarts Bites, the company sought market data to determine placement, assortment and promotion in store. Traditional tests—online surveys and in-home user tests—showed that consumers expected to find new products higher up on a shelf.
With Kellogg’s and Qualcomm, we developed a VR solution with embedded eye-tracking that produced a slightly different answer, and the results offer a glimpse at a new reality for brands, retailers and consumer testing.
Mobile VR with eye-tracking helps brands and retailers extend their reach to geographically dispersed participants, performing research faster, more affordably and at larger scale, while providing holistic conclusions.
Accenture teamed with Qualcomm and Kellogg’s to reinvent how brands and retailers gather consumer data and perform research at a larger scale. See more.
View TranscriptYou can invite geographically dispersed consumers to use mobile VR headsets for product testing in their homes, at stores and during product roadshows.
Shoppers can walk through a realistic virtual store model, look at shelves, pick up and examine products and place selections directly into their carts.
You can gather deeper data through eye-tracking technology built into mobile VR headsets in a way that does not interrupt the shopping experience.
The VR-based solution makes it easy to test a variety of planogram combinations in a faster and cost-effective manner and reach a holistic conclusion for the product and the category.
With Kellogg’s and Qualcomm, Accenture Extended Reality (XR) designed an immersive experience based on the brand’s real-world need to test the planogram, assortment and pricing strategy for the launch of Pop Tarts Bites.
What truly set the VR-driven results apart? Additional insights from the eye-tracking analytics, providing a wider window into the shopper’s behavior than you typically would get from traditional testing methods like in-home user tests, or online surveys.
The VR testing revealed that when the Pop Tarts Bites were placed on a lower shelf – rather than higher up where consumers typically expect to find new products – testers paid more attention to other surrounding Pop Tarts products. That stimulated additional sales of Pop Tarts items, with an overall 18 percent brand sales increase during testing.
Thus, mobile VR with eye-tracking delivered a different, more informed and wholistic merchandising conclusion.
Accenture teamed with Qualcomm and Kellogg’s to reinvent how brands and retailers gather consumer data and perform research. See more.
View TranscriptVR Merchandising at scale, with an easy-to-use mobile VR headset equipped with eye-tracking, produces deeper data and more informed conclusions, leading to more optimal product placement and assortment that considers the whole category and not just the single product.
Based on these outcomes, brands, retailers and consumer packaged goods companies can build a virtual store once and replace virtual product sets as needed to perform better consumer testing scenarios across more geographies, ultimately contributing to additional revenue generation potential.
Ready to explore the benefits of VR Merchandising for your company? We recommend the following steps: