Macy's Using Virtual Reality for Furniture Sales

Really a pretty old idea, was one of the first ideas we examined for demonstration and sales.    I encountered IKEAs approach in-store  just a few days ago, well done, but not enough AR to understand how your choices would fit in.   Also drove home the point that for store and online experiences the consumer needs to be able to use the system quickly.  Its different in research.   We experimented with it to understand how product would exist on shelves with other products.   See also approaches that mix VR, AR and physical digital displays, such as John Milby's Full Scale Virtual Research (FSVR).

Macy’s will use VR to sell furniture in 50 stores by summer
 By Jeremy Horowitz  @Horowitz  in Venturebeat

VR and online shopping are often portrayed as enemies of brick-and-mortar retail, but shopping mall anchor Macy’s plans to embrace both technologies in a bid to improve its sales, reports FurnitureToday. Speaking at the ShopTalk retail conference in Las Vegas, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette announced that he will bring VR furniture-selling tools to 50 stores by this summer and plans to offer the immersive shopping technology in “as many stores as possible.”

According to Gennette, the virtue of virtual reality is its ability to “sell more furniture with less, or even no, square footage devoted to displaying it.” Macy’s piloted a VR system that let customers use a tablet to add furniture to a room, move the pieces around until they seemed optimal, then experience the fully furnished room using VR. The system enabled customers to feel more comfortable about furniture fit and “significantly increased” both total transaction sizes and sales of items that Macy’s carries but didn’t keep on site.  .... "