Recent times have seen countless businesses embracing the exciting potential of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR). Many businesses and app designers are making VR part of their product, but it also holds great potential as a market research tool, enabling simulations that give businesses fast insights into actual customer behaviour. Here are five benefits of VR in market research:
1. It Allows Ultra-Realistic In-Store Testing
In the past, in-store testing for trialling retail store design and physical ad placement relied on focus groups and guided studies. The problem is focus group responses didn’t always model actual shopper behaviour. In the case of guided testing, sometimes the presence and influence of people carrying out tests gives biased results. VR lets retailers and brands create ultra-realistic store environments for laser-focused in-store testing. This enables faster insights into which product and aisle arrangements, advertising placements and other strategies get results.
2. It Allows Smarter, More Profitable Decisions
Although traditional surveys are useful for identifying trends in customer expectations and experience, VR enables smarter, more profitable decisions. A realistic virtual testing environment lets you record customer interaction with a physical environment on the fly, so you can determine quickly what decisions facilitate the most desirable customer behaviour.
3. It Helps Replace Gut Decisions With Data-Backed Decisions
Many businesses make customer experience (CX) decisions based on hunches and hypotheses. Yet when you design a product through to completion without data-proven insights, you may well find abundant usability issues. VR is enabling businesses to present prototypes in a VR environment, long before any design is committed to physical form. This gives retailers a chance to test new products so they only choose to stock the most successful.
4. It Assists Team Collaboration
When teams work in silos and there is no communication, it’s easy for design flaws to creep in. With a VR testing environment, all involved members can view a prototype and virtual reality testing and share notes and feedback. This single-environment testing framework removes time-wasting back and forth between specialists.
5. It Enables Businesses To Keep Abreast Of CX Trends
Because VR adoption is increasing, businesses that aren’t using this technology for customer experience insights risk trailing behind. By incorporating VR into your market research framework, you can ensure you stay at the forefront of insightful market research and implementation.
Do you need help optimising your market research? Contact Interact RDT today.