Augmented Reality: how Pikachu helps e-commerce

With over 75 million downloads in less than three weeks, the release of Pokémon Go made headlines all around the world. All over the world stories in the news told of hunts for the likes of Squirtle, Char­mander and Co.

Time and again there were reports on how augmented reality finally had its first big break­through. But amid all of the fanfare, one important detail seemed to go unnoticed for the most part: the tech­no­logy behind Pokémon Go isn’t new at all. The term ‘augmented reality’ has been used by the computing and en­ter­tain­ment industry since the beginning of the nineties. What Pokémon Go managed to achieve, however, was to bring this tech­no­logy to private users by making it available for anyone with a smart­phone or tablet.

Augmented reality presents enormous marketing potential, a fact that’s supported by the in­ter­est­ing wave of new e-commerce ap­plic­a­tions that have come about over the past few years: from virtual furniture stores, to fitting glasses via webcam, new ap­proaches to this tech­no­logy appear to cropping up more in more in our daily lives. And as this trend continues to grow, the industry will most likely react by releasing more and more ap­plic­a­tions. Companies that are quick to react will be able to make the most of users’ interest for augmented reality and po­ten­tially be able to tap into new customer groups.

Augmented reality refers to any computer-assisted expansion to the way in which we perceive reality. While virtual reality users are fully immersed in their digital worlds, augmented reality simply adds digital aspects or content to the real world by relying on elements or features such as:

• The visual rep­res­ent­a­tion of ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion in the real world
• Adding ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion to videos or images
• Fading in virtual objects

Virtual elements in your real en­vir­on­ment? One simple example that most people seem to know of this comes from sports broad­casts. Often during a football game, tele­vi­sion broad­casters add in ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion. Whether or not a player was offside is often easy to recognise, as the offside line is digitally faded onto the viewer’s screen. And when it comes to ski jumping, a digital line is projected across the screen in order to indicate to viewers whether or not the jumper has surpassed the distance of the current leading contender.

In order to be able to ex­per­i­ence augmented reality with a mobile device while on the go, one generally needs a camera, a tracking device, and the proper software. This tech­no­logy can be im­ple­men­ted in many different areas; it can be used to help carry out complex tasks in in­dus­tri­al settings or can be used to support military and disaster man­age­ment topics, for example. As pre­vi­ously mentioned, however, the en­ter­tain­ment industry has been re­spons­ible for most of the recent increase in attention sur­round­ing the tech­no­logy. Other fields, including ar­chi­tec­ture and medicine also employ this tech­no­logy.

Click here to download the in­fograph­ic about the prognosis of virtual and augmented reality.

Augmented reality combines real life with digital com­pon­ents. When these two aspects blend together, such marketing mech­an­isms are able to fascinate their viewers, leaving a stronger im­pres­sion behind with potential customers. But in addition to the attention that’s gained through augmented reality, this means of ad­vert­ising also opens up new options for directly coming into contact with customers. Brands and busi­nesses have the option of pro­ject­ing in­form­a­tion to their customers in real time. This tactic offers marketers the chance to get in contact with target groups on a more personal level.

But why should customers be in­ter­ested in allowing such in­ter­fer­ences in their daily lives? The answer is because they too stand to gain from this increased level of contact with brands and companies, as examples from the e-commerce sector show.

Augmented reality is also ex­tens­ively used in the furniture and design industry. Known for its creative and in­nov­at­ive marketing and business practices, the Swedish industry giant, IKEA, began ex­per­i­ment­ing with AR tech­no­logy as early as 2013. The idea here is to enable pro­spect­ive customers to project furniture items from the current IKEA catalog into their own living room. True to scale, these pro­jec­tions allow shoppers to get an idea of how the item would look within the confines of their own private quarters.

The following video lays out how this tech­no­logy works:

Pair is a further company that is able to give per­spect­ive customers access to virtual showrooms with the help of augmented reality. The iOS app allows users to place furniture items within their own four walls. The concept is similar to that the IKEA ap­plic­a­tion mentioned above but is even more advanced. Pair works together with various brands and producers and claims that its service helps customers more quickly decide upon a product, in­creas­ing the amount of augmented reality-driven sales in the process.

Pair is also an in­ter­est­ing tool for interior designers and ar­chi­tects. The app allows customers to view how the planned set-up would look within the customers’ space. Pair allows ideas to be more con­cretely visu­al­ised and makes planned room designs more tangible.

Many voices from the digital industry have already spoken and declared that augmented reality will be an important marketing trend for the next several years. The diverse array of ap­proaches to this tech­no­logy means that there’s great potential for expanding the reach of your products or services and enhancing your customer’s ex­per­i­ence. Niche markets, in par­tic­u­lar, stand to gain from this tech­no­logy, as the example with trying on eye glasses shows.

In any case, this tech­no­logy can be im­ple­men­ted in many different areas, and the hype around apps like Pokémon Go only increase the notoriety of augmented reality, paving the way for future ap­plic­a­tions.