Beyond Reality: Leveraging AR & VR for Business Growth #StrategySeries034

Business Strategy Series - 034

Virtual and Augmented Reality in Business Strategy

The Customer Experience Improvement

The adoption of innovative technologies is of tremendous assistance to companies in ensuring an elevated customer experience. For example, retailers use AR applications to let customers visualize products in their own environments before making a purchase. Brands like IKEA and Sephora have gone ahead and deployed AR-powered apps that allow customers to see how furniture looks like inside their homes or how makeup will appear on their skin. Organizations can similarly offer VR-aided experiences that allow a customer to visit virtual showrooms, or go on guided tours to provide deeper immersion and engagement into the shopping experience.

Training and Development

VR and AR are welcome, albeit recent additions to the list of employee training and development. These technologies are used to create environments as realistic simulations for training purposes, which allows employees to get some experience with the situation while feeling safe. In the case of the healthcare industry, this includes the use of VR in medical training which allows surgeons-in-training to virtually practice complex procedures before trying them on live patients. Another example includes the use of VR in at least the aviation and the manufacturing industries to simulate situations for pilots-in-training and operators-in-training.

Marketing and Branding

With the advent of AR and VR, new marketing strategies are evolving. Brands are now creating immersive campaigns that captivate audiences and drive engagement. AR-powered advertising provides a deeper level of interaction for the consumers with products, the interaction and engagement with products being much deeper than traditional media. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have engaged in solid AR-based marketing campaigns which go a long way toward retaining brand recall with consumer interactions.

Innovation of Real Estate and Architecture

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) also came very significantly to influence the real estate and architecture industries. Now, a client can take a virtual walkthrough of a house for sale, saving time and labor in visiting a part of the real estate market. Augmented reality integrates and displays digital designs on to physical spaces in such a way that the client can view the end result of design even prior to the commencement of construction. Other applications streamline transparency while minimizing the costs associated with visiting physical sites.

Future Outlook and Challenges

There are, however, challenges to reckon with. There are many who remain skeptical about the application of AR or VR technologies in business strategy and are hesitant to integrate the usage of stunning VR into their business. High cost of development, limitation of technology and the set of specialized hardware might seem really tedious for being a big part of their daily use. Going forward with advancing technology becomes more feasible, a wider adoption of AR and VR in business strategies will increase to further develop and enhance efficiency and customer engagement.

Virtual and Augmented Reality are unveiling whole new horizons for businesses; they allow for much quicker operational processes, enhanced customer interaction, and the initiation of employee training. By using VR and AR strategically, businesses will be ahead of the competition by driving customer satisfaction and innovation. As AR and VR are burgeoning, embracing these technologies will give the businesses an edge to be successful in the continually inclined digital world.

Pro Tip :

Ensure that your AR/VR applications are intuitive, engaging, and add real value to users.

“AR and VR aren’t just technologies; they’re new ways to experience the world.”

How can businesses overcome the cost barrier to adopting AR & VR?

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