How Interactive Retail Experiences Improve The Way Customers Shop

When it comes to retail, physical stores have been the go-to for customers as they offer them a tangible way to try out the products that they are interested in. But while they are important, e-commerce websites and digital stores have seen significant growth in the last decade. They offer several convenience features, such as ordering a product from the comfort of home, 24/7 access to a wide variety of products in the catalogue, shopping from a global market, or checking reviews before ordering. Digital stores often compensate for the lack of tangibility with a plethora of features. However, as the competition is getting tougher, several brands have realized that interactive retail experiences are the future of phygital stores.

What are Interactive Retail Experiences?

An interactive retail experience is a digital or physical installation in a store used by retail brands to allow their customers to actively engage or "interact" with their products or services instead of just looking at them. The goal of such experiences is to help customers learn about the products that they are interested in, in a fun manner. Thus, instead of having to look up information about the products online, like their specifications or features, the customers get to virtually or physically try them out.

A regular retail experience often comes down to the customer going to the store, browsing the product and asking the salesperson about the features, whether a demo unit is available, and then checking out the product. However, with an interactive experience, the customer gets multiple ways to interact with the same product, like they could use VR to test out the products in different environments. For example, when a brand is selling something big and space-consuming like a sofa or a fridge, it isn't really practical for the customer to carry it home just to see what it would look like in their room or kitchen. However, if the brand offers AR experiences, they could select the sofa of their liking and virtually place it in their room to see how it would look after the purchase.

Experiential Retail Design: How Different Brands Use Interactive Technology

Nike's New York Flagship Phygital Store 

The Nike House of Innovation store on New York's Fifth Avenue is a great example of how interactive experiences can be integrated into physical retail stores. The main highlight of this store is its Speed Shop. Here, the customer has to use the Nike app’s retail mode, which pops up when the app recognizes that they have entered a retail store. Some of it's features include the option to allow customers to request items, unlock their locker, and check out in-store.

For example, if a customer is on one of the apparel-focused floors and they see a mannequin with a T-shirt that they like, they no longer have to manually look around the store to find the same T-shirt. Instead, they can scan a QR code next to the mannequin, and the entire mannequin's outfit will appear on their phone. The customer can then request whichever ones they want to try, and they would be sent to a fitting room in their preferred size. The best part is they don't have to immediately try it; they can also scan other products in the store and request them to be added to the room. This greatly improves the buying experience. Customers get the convenience of a digital or online store while also getting the tangibility of a physical store.

Sephora's Smart AR Mirrors

AR is an interactive technology that can be used in several creative ways to create retail experiences. With Sephora's smart AR mirrors, one of them allowed the customer to stand in front of the mirror and scroll through the options to find their "new favorite way to contour". Next, all they had to do was select a style and click on the camera. The AR mirror would take the user's image and add contour to their face using the dot system.

Similarly, another mirror would let them choose between lipstick, eyeliner, blusher, etc., and other cosmetics, and the smart mirror would apply the makeup to their face in real time. This mirror also had a comparison feature allowing them to compare their existing makeup with the one they just tried by simply swiping.

How Our Client Offered Customers an Interactive Retail Experience

The Dot Hub AI Experience Center by Deloitte in Bangalore is a great example of what an interactive retail experience can be when done right. For this project, their goal was to give clients, business partners, and other interested prospects not only a visually appealing but also a tangible experience of what is in store for the future of retail.

We came up with two solutions that made use of the cutting-edge technology at the time to create an experiential platform that showcases the innovations that Deloitte has to offer. The solutions include an OLED HoloBox that features an AI virtual sales assistant, Nova, and an Object Recognition Table (ORT).

Using the OLED HoloBox, the customers got to interact with Nova. She is an AI-powered virtual sales assistant that could have analytics-driven conversations with the clients while also being capable of offering personalized suggestions. One of the many features that made her appealing to the audience was her realistic facial expressions; as such, despite being an AI assistant, it gave her that human feel, which allowed her to have non-monotonous conversations with the audience.

For the interactive retail experience's second highlight, we have the Object Recognition Table (ORT). As its name suggests, this is a "table" that can "recognize" certain objects placed on it. For example, a customer can take a pair of earrings and place them on the table to learn more about them. Once placed, the table would identify the object, which in this case is earrings, and give the customer information about it, including its origin, metal and gemstone details, price breakdown, and more. However, to enhance their experience, this table didn't just allow placing an order but also gave customization options. As such, they could change the type of gemstones used in it. Once the customer is happy, they could then use the table to place the order.

This interactive retail experience had impressive results:

• 17,00,000+ global visitors
• 50,000+ AI interactions

In conclusion, interactive experiences are the future of retail. These experiences allow customers to actively engage with the products and give them better ways to understand them. Several businesses in the sector are already using them, be it Nike's House of Innovation store in New York, Sephora's AR smart mirrors, or Deloitte's Dot Hub AI center. Brands that install such experiences don't just represent the future of retail but also generate an organic buzz about them with their customers.

But an interactive retail experience only works properly when brands create them in a way that showcases the full potential of their products or services. This is where experienced agencies come in, as they can outsource the marketing part to them, and one of the best experiential MarTech agencies in India is Ink In Caps. Be it creating full-fledged experience centers or simply using different technologies like AR, VR, holographic installations, or more to market your products, we have over 8 years of experience in delivering unforgettable campaigns for brands.Book a demo now to create an interactive retail experience for your customers to remember!