Virtual Reality Shopping South Africa
Online shopping has changed the way we shop for products. In many cases people will search products online before purchasing the products in a real shop. The trend currently shows that people are buying more products online as people are getting more tech savvy.
A good example in the South Africa retail industry is Takealot the online shopping site. According to Naspers which released its financial results for the year to 31 March 2018, it revealed that Takealot increased its gross merchandise volume by 57% over the last year. Each year Takealot is breaking new records for online retail in South Africa and it is likely to continue.
Although Naspers did not reveal how much revenue Takealot generates, industry speculation puts its revenue at around R3 billion to R4 billion per year. This is huge numbers for an online business, and it is even more significant when one looks at sites like Amazon which retails worldwide via their online stores.
According to some other studies people still prefer to purchase some product in real stores because of the Social aspects and therapeutically kicks people get from shopping.
This might change soon with Virtual Reality becoming more realistic every day as more people adopts and purchase high-end virtual reality equipment like the HTC VIVE and Oculus Virtual Reality headsets it is soon going to become a high-income high-volume mainstream medium and not as many early doomsayers suggested a sole user experience. Today virtual reality is quickly becoming a medium where you can share the experience with other people inside virtual reality. (You can shop in a store, see other people shopping and interact with these people in virtual reality).
High-End VR Glasses best for interactive Virtual Reality Shopping
In high-end virtual reality systems like the HTC VIVE, Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest which allows for 6 Degrees of Freedom interaction with products and moving naturally like you would in real life things are about to change. The advancement in these virtual reality headsets allow people to interact with products the same way as they would in a real shop, but also soon will allow them to interact with other people inside the experience making it very social. Unlike in a real shop you can get much more information about a product in virtual reality than you can get in-store. You can pick-up the product, view it from all sides, if it is a technical product you can possibly open the box take out the product learn more about the product and view videos about the product or augmented reality tips about the product etc.
Call for Retailers to invest in Virtual Reality
We have started developing Virtual Reality online retail experiences and calls on investors, wholesalers and retail to support this development. It is still very experiential, but the potential is huge for investors, wholesalers and retailers to get into the market early.
For more information you can contact Gerald Ferreira on Cell: 072 234 7513 or email gerald@virtual-reality.co.za.