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.  .... " 

Full Scale Virtual Research

Former P&G Shopping Behavior scientist and colleague John Milby sends along an update of this work virtualizing shopping context for experimental understanding.  Connect with his deep expertise!

" ... Please share with your colleagues. Let me know if we can provide any additional information or support .... 

Introductory Video:   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb2emckoc84

Website:    FSVR Website  

Winning Starts At The Shelf
Cutting Edge Virtual Research

 Full Scale Virtual Research is dedicated to providing  clients with innovative, and comprehensive marketing research solutions for winning at the shelf. Our Virtual Wall's proprietary technology provides full scale, touch interactive, high quality shopping environments  to identify insightful shopper biases that are so important to Winning At The Shelf !  ... 

Best regards.    John Milby, CEO

Full Scale Virtual Research, LLC
11353 Reed Hartman Hwy, Suite 101
Cincinnati, Ohio   45241
t | 513 387-2222
c | 513 379-8355
e | jmilby@fs-vr.com   .... " 

More Virtual Research

Had another excellent interaction with John Milby, CEO of the startup Full Scale Virtual Research,which uses some of the technology developed at Procter & Gamble and has extended it considerably to virtualize consumer research in a number of new and exciting ways.  In the picture shown here, from his latest slide show, a shopper interacts with a shelf, points at a package and is able to read the text on the package.  All with full scale, very high resolution images. Other aspects of the interaction can include how a shopper might use smartphone and tablet interaction with shelf information.  See this space for more information about their progress.

Full Scale Virtual Research Continued

I made another working visit to John Milby's Full Scale Virtual Research laboratory today and remain very impressed by their abilities and direction.  He has taken the capabilities far beyond our enterprise lab work. I had professor Shu Schiller of Wright State University with me and we discussed the practical applications of the method, and its similarity to augmented reality research methods she is working on in her research.  This resulted from a talk I gave at Wright State last weekend on the implications of the 'end to end virtual supply chain'.

Imagine the ability to rapidly interact with shelf designs and expose designs to the shopper.  Build experimental designs and create trade offs for all sorts of packaging,  fixtures and product placement.  Understand the mechanics and details of consumer first-moment-of-truth choice.  Include how shoppers use their smart phones in the store.   Integrate advanced methods like eye tracking.  All at full scale and seamlessly, digitally and quickly done.  Contact me or John Milby directly at the link above for more information.

Virtual Consumer Research

A worthwhile reprise based on several comments and calls.  Virtual research is a powerful concept:

We didn’t just decide to leverage some industry standard research experience into a new approach. All of our founding partners participated in developing “the first” full scale virtual research product that truly reflected the reality that shoppers experience at the shelf. 

Our virtual research was developed to reflect the same results as physical research – tested in side by side comparisons. Additional panelist/participant research demonstrated that our virtual testing did not introduce behavioral or attitudinal differences. Research and market results are consistent....  


Saw John Milby's Full Scale Virtual Research Lab.  I received a great tour and technical discussion of work underway there.  I worked with John at our enterprise retail laboratories for years.

He is the consummate consumer research professional using years of experience to apply to brick and mortar retail, mobile environments and the interaction of retail and mobile devices.

He leverages a laboratory that displays full scale product images and shelf environments where shoppers interact with and compare products.  The data is then gathered and analytically combined with other captured behavioral information.   Certainly impressive technology, but it is more  valuable yet to apply years of consumer behavior experience to improve shopper experience and engagement.  John continues to build partnerships with many other expert practitioners in the field to further enhance these abilities.  Good work.

" ... his guiding principal was “consumers will know it when they see it; the challenge is to remove the limitations on what we can show them. Virtual packaging and shelf design is the path to our future.” ... "

Contact information at this link.

Full Scale Virtual Research

I had the pleasure of visiting John Milby's Full Scale Virtual Research Lab today.  Got a great tour and technical discussion of work underway there.  I worked with John at our enterprise retail laboratories for years.

He is the consummate consumer research professional using years of experience to apply to brick and mortar retail, mobile environments and the interaction of retail and mobile devices.

He leverages a laboratory that displays full scale product images and shelf environments where shoppers interact with and compare products.  The data is then gathered and analytically combined with other captured behavioral information.   Certainly impressive technology, but it is more  valuable yet to apply years of consumer behavior experience to improve shopper experience and engagement.  John continues to build partnerships with many other expert practitioners in the field to further enhance these abilities.  Good work.

" ... his guiding principal was “consumers will know it when they see it; the challenge is to remove the limitations on what we can show them. Virtual packaging and shelf design is the path to our future.” ... "

Contact information at this link.