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Ikea is rolling out a new augmented reality (AR) application, called Ikea Place, according to Retail Dive.
Ikea Place will be available at the end of September in Apple's App Store, and customers with Apple devices running iOS 11 will be able to use it to view how items would look in their home.
The app scales products with 98% accuracy, and shoppers can move them virtually around a room. More than 2,000 products will be available in AR on the launch date, and the selection will be primarily focused on larger furniture, such as sofas, arm chairs, and coffee tables.
Interest in AR for e-commerce purchases is rising — 58% of consumers want to useAR to see how products will look before purchasing them — and the furniture and home improvement markets are quickly moving on this trend.
- Online furniture retailer Wayfair, a reputed first mover in AR for home goods, recentlyintegrated its AR app, WayfairView, into its main shopping app.
- Meanwhile, Williams Sonoma is looking into 3D product visualization tools similar to Wayfair’s AR app, to cater to its sizeable online shopper base.
- Lowe's is testing an AR app — Lowe’s Vision — which would allows consumers to view AR versions of thousands of products to see how they fit and look in parts of their home.
Ikea’s app will be obtainable to a much wider audience than the Wayfair app, which may give it an edge in a burgeoning market. Digital sales of furniture and home furnishings climbed to $30.8 billion in 2016, and are estimated to account for nearly 20% of all retail sales in that category by 2021. Although Wayfair has been using AR for sometime now, the option is available only on phones enabled with Google’s Tango AR technology, limiting the number of customers who can use it.
With Ikea’s large customer base and the accessibility of its AR tech, the company may be able to grab a large share of the online home furnishings market — which would bolster its revenue and stiffen competition.
One of retailers' top priorities is to figure out how to gain an edge over Amazon. To do this, many retailers are attempting to differentiate themselves by creating highly curated experiences that combine the personal feel of in-store shopping with the convenience of online portals.
These personalized online experiences are powered by artificial intelligence (AI). This is the technology that enables e-commerce websites to recommend products uniquely suited to shoppers, and enables people to search for products using conversational language, or just images, as though they were interacting with a person.
Using AI to personalize the customer journey could be a huge value-add to retailers. Retailers that have implemented personalization strategies see sales gains of 6-10%, a rate two to three times faster than other retailers, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It could also boost profitability rates 59% in the wholesale and retail industries by 2035, according to Accenture.
Stephanie Pandolph, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has written a detailed report on AI in e-commerce that:
- Provides an overview of the numerous applications of AI in retail, using case studies of how retailers are currently gaining an advantage using this technology. These applications include personalizing online interfaces, tailoring product recommendations, increasing the relevance of shoppers search results, and providing immediate and useful customer service.
- Examines the various challenges that retailers may face when looking to implementing AI, which typically stems from data storage systems being outdated and inflexible, as well as organizational barriers that prevent personalization strategies from being executed effectively.
- Gives two different strategies that retailers can use to successfully implement AI, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy.
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