100 million shoppers to be enabled by AR Technology by next year, says report

A Gartner research has reportedly revealed that by 2020, 100 million people would shop in-store and online using Augmented Reality (AR). These technology enable people to visualise products in different settings.

Industry reports show that once technologies like AR and Virtual Reality (VR) get embedded with 5G capabilities, the possibilities would include real-time rendering for immersive videos, shorter downloads and set-up times along retail experiences that go beyond stores.

"Retailers are under increasing pressure to explain the purpose of physical stores and take control of the fulfilment and return process for cross-channel execution, at the same time, consumers are progressively defining the value provided by the experiences they receive from retailers. As a result of these pressures, retailers are turning to AR and VR to offer customers a unified retail experience inside and outside retail stores,"
Hanna Karki, Principal Research Analyst, is reported to have said.

A 2018 Gartner survey also indicated that by 2020, 46 per cent of retailers planned to deploy either AR or VR solutions to meet customer service experience requirements.

According to Gartner, the technologies behind these solutions have moved 15 to 30 per cent further along the Gartner Hype Cycle over the past 12 months.

"5G can optimise warehouse resources, enhance store traffic analytics and enable beacons that communicate with shoppers' smartphones," said Sylvain Fabre, Senior Research Director at Gartner was quoted as saying in media reports.

Some of the brands that already use AR and VR technologies include furniture retail giant IKEA, which allows people to virtually place IKEA products in their space; Alibaba, which lets users experience shopping in full VR; Tesco which provides VR tours to users and Adidas which uses VR video to promote its outdoor clothing collection.