Will shopping be better in the metaverse?

I have just had a busy day under­go­ing retail ther­a­py. Still unsure about which elec­tric vehi­cle to buy after expe­ri­enc­ing how Hyundai’s lat­est Ion­iq mod­el looks and feels, I popped over to the skate park to try on some Vans train­ers. Then I head­ed to the Guc­ci Gar­den, where I was almost more inter­est­ed in the exhi­bi­tion and the but­ter­flies fly­ing around my avatar’s head than in check­ing out the new fash­ion col­lec­tion. 

This is the future of retail – today. You can already shop till you drop in the meta­verse, albeit on a video-gam­ing plat­form such as Roblox, a sys­tem that more than 40 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide are famil­iar with. You can spend real mon­ey on vir­tu­al goods, fuelled by the likes of bit­coin, blockchain and non-fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs), where authen­tic­i­ty and cur­ren­cy are pre­served in our vir­tu­al worlds. 

This is just the start of so-called Web 3.0 and how it will trans­form our shop­ping habits, accord­ing to Luke West­on, brand expe­ri­ence strat­e­gy direc­tor at design agency House­hold. 

“The meta­verse could have a pro­found impact on the way that we shop,” he says. “Retail in this dig­i­tal space will not be con­fined by chan­nel, device or medi­um. It will be all around us, serv­ing as a mul­ti­lay­ered, extend­ed real­i­ty in which the world becomes inter­ac­tive, con­nect­ed and shop­pable.”

Vir­tu­al video-gam­ing worlds already have meta­verse ambi­tions. They give us a glimpse of what the future might look like for retail before the likes of Face­book – or, rather, Meta – start invest­ing huge sums in the field. That’s because three-quar­ters of the industry’s rev­enue comes from games that enable the sale of vir­tu­al goods, accord­ing to mar­ket research firm New­zoo. 

Vir­tu­al shop­ping malls already exist, as do digi­tised retail prod­ucts on these plat­forms. You can now buy all sorts of cloth­ing and even angel wings to make your avatar stand out from the crowd. A dig­i­tal copy of a real Guc­ci hand­bag was recent­ly resold for more than £3,000. Pop star Zara Lars­son has even made a sev­en-fig­ure sum sell­ing mer­chan­dise on Roblox. Sim­u­lat­ed Fer­raris can now be test-dri­ven. Burber­ry oper­ates a dig­i­tal twin of its Tokyo store, while Tumi and Der­ma­log­i­ca have immer­sive online retail fronts. The meta­verse has even spawned vir­tu­al flag­ship stores from Lancôme and Fen­di.

“Reflect­ing what a phys­i­cal store looks like is one approach that many retail­ers are tak­ing,” says Emma Chiu, glob­al direc­tor at Wun­der­man Thomp­son Intel­li­gence. “But some brands are max­imis­ing the cre­ative idea that dig­i­tal should defy grav­i­ty and mat­ter in retail.” 

And there­in lies the future. Bricks and mor­tar once defined how we shopped – phys­i­cal­ly hang­ing out at a shop­ping mall was as good as it got. Immer­sive fic­tion­al worlds accessed through vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets in the com­fort of your liv­ing room know no bound­aries. Sto­ry­telling and new forms of engage­ment will become the norm. Some experts are call­ing this 360-degree retail. 

The future of retail?

Envis­age hop­ping around the world to vis­it dif­fer­ent vir­tu­al stores, test-dri­ving the dig­i­tal twin of a new car or try­ing on an item of vir­tu­al cloth­ing, where feed­back updat­ed in real time deter­mines what prod­ucts are released, and when, in both the meta­verse and the real world. 

The good thing about vir­tu­al retail is that it should be more sus­tain­able and con­tribute less to cli­mate change than real-world items. Retail brands will increas­ing­ly make that point: con­sume more vir­tu­al­ly, less mate­ri­al­ly. 

“Also imag­ine if research­ing a pur­chase were to no longer involve trawl­ing the pages of an ecom­merce site, scan­ning online reviews or watch­ing adverts on social media,” West­on says. “Imag­ine if the shop­ping jour­ney were in the meta­verse instead, with the prod­uct in con­text, in an immer­sive vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment, shared with friends and guid­ed by the brand’s ‘avatar ambas­sadors’. We also now fore­see increas­ing val­ue placed on vir­tu­al iden­ti­ties and pos­ses­sions.” 

Expect new col­lec­tions to be revealed in the meta­verse first. Real-world brands will also recruit for cre­ative and tech­ni­cal tal­ent to help enhance their meta­verse capa­bil­i­ties. Brands could gen­er­ate val­ue through scarci­ty by cre­at­ing rare dig­i­tal assets, ver­i­fied by NFTs and pur­chased with cryp­tocur­ren­cies. 

One con­cern for retail­ers in this brave new world is that, if the inter­net is the great lev­eller, then so is the meta­verse. Any­one can set up a store front here. 

“This rais­es the ques­tion of how you dis­tin­guish your offer­ing against every­one else’s in the meta­verse,” says Nick Coop­er, glob­al exec­u­tive direc­tor, insights and ana­lyt­ics, at brand con­sul­tan­cy Lan­dor & Fitch. “Dis­tri­b­u­tion, loca­tion and avail­abil­i­ty issues are large­ly removed from the equa­tion, while the foot­print of every retail ‘estate’ is the same. This means that it will be impos­si­ble to stand out with­out a clear brand propo­si­tion.”

He con­tin­ues: “Equal­ly, if phys­i­cal con­straints are removed, the meta­verse pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate the ulti­mate brand expe­ri­ence.”

Where the meta­verse of retail gets inter­est­ing is how it starts to inter­act and merge with, as well as influ­ence, the real world. The aug­ment­ed expe­ri­ence will spawn new forms of con­sumerism and brand engage­ment, espe­cial­ly with new vir­tu­al, aug­ment­ed and mixed-real­i­ty tech­nolo­gies aid­ed by 5G con­nec­tiv­i­ty. 

Loy­al­ty points in the vir­tu­al world could be redeemed at real stores. Retail­ers can democ­ra­tise advi­so­ry ser­vices, since meet­ing big-name design­ers is eas­i­er when it’s done vir­tu­al­ly. Expect blend­ed-real­i­ty show­rooms – Sel­f­ridges’ tie-up with cloth­ing brand Char­li Cohen and Poké­mon gives an insight into what’s to come using AR and immer­sive dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences in store, acces­si­ble via a smart­phone.

“Also take a look at Nike, which is on a mis­sion to get kids mov­ing,” West­on says. “It’s using vir­tu­al expe­ri­ences to help achieve this. We expect more brands to use the meta­verse as a means of con­nect­ing across real­i­ties.” 

And, should a brand be won­der­ing whether it should invest in the meta­verse, just think of the oppor­tu­ni­ties, Coop­er adds. “If every­one has an avatar that they want to clothe, beau­ti­fy and house, the buy­ing pub­lic essen­tial­ly dou­bles in size,” he says. “So the future for retail is very bright.”