With retail becoming a big user of smarter offerings that are client-focused, Accenture, Qualcomm, and The Kellogg Company have teamed up to create a virtual reality (VR) merchandising solution for retail industry players.
The solution determines the best way for retailers to stock their shelves. The VR headset provides consumers a full-scale, simulated store, using eye-tracking technology and mixed reality software. With the headset, the technology allows the wearer to move through the store, shop, pick up products and place them in carts. It can also monitor what consumers look at, for how long and why. This allows companies to reach more geographically dispersed consumers and conduct market research more effectively.
Earlier, the solution was tested in collaboration with the Kellogg Company and showed the optimal placement for its new product line, resulting in an increase in brands sales of 18%.
“Our VR merchandising solution has the potential to transform product placement by examining consumer buying behavior in a holistic way,” said Raffaella Camera, global head, Innovation & Market Strategy, Accenture Extended Reality.”By combining the power of VR with eye-tracking and analytics capabilities, it allows significant new insights to be captured while consumers shop by monitoring where and how they evaluate all products across an entire shelf or aisle. Ultimately, this enables product placement decisions to be made that can positively impact total brand sales, versus only single product sales.”
Accenture’s Extended Reality practice developed the solution using a Qualcomm VR reference design headset that was powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR platform.
The solution also features embedded eye-tracking and mixed reality software from InContext Solutions as well as eye-tracking data analytics capabilities from Cognitive3D.
