Spending time in the virtual world has become an irrefutable part of iGeneration or the post-millennials. Today we see businesses building a retail brand presence in Metaverse, to cash in on the newest possibility and grow in this space. We can see a few brands like Nike, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Dior, and Givenchy creating their first virtual footprint in the luxury fashion space. This proves that Metaverse is not just for the techies and gamers alone. But it also embraces apparel brands, automobiles, and the travel industry to create the best user experience.
Brands can interact with a new set of audiences for finding more opportunities to grow. According to Gartner, in the next 5 five years, about 40% of the organizations in the world will be digitally ready to compete with each other in the Metaverse. Let’s look at the metaverse in-depth and learn how to own digital space for building your brand in photo realistic environments.
What is the Metaverse
Meta is a 3D space (a mimic of the real world) where users can interact with each other by creating avatars. This digital space is about creating an experience for customers, making it a perfect platform for brands to advertise in it. Marketing in the metaverse can work in multiple ways for the brands as it keeps users engaged by making digital collectibles available for trade, creating communities, allowing customers to try products, and creating interactive live events. Almost everything is possible in the new virtual world.
Why is the Metaverse Appealing to Retailers?
Retail in the metaverse is a virtual space where users can explore virtual markets to interact with brands via augmented reality. For example, one can check out products and services by taking a virtual tour. Retail metaverse provides brands with a shopping mall experience that a generic e-commerce website fails to offer. Where the e-shoppers can interact with other shoppers and brands, and get inspired to make purchases in a simulated environment.
The concept of creating a digital world has only just started, a couple of years since it became available for the public commercially. This is the perfect timing to enter the virtual world so that retailers can evolve with the tech and medium to secure their presence, as suggested by DMG in an article about the retail metaverse. The golden time for retailers to enter this world is now and retail analytical companies can guide your strategies and deploy your brand into the metaverse retailing.
The Future of Fashion Retail
There is no better way for fashion retail brands to meet and connect with the upcoming generations. They are the native users of virtual reality and offering customized solutions for them, can work wonders for your brand to grow in a different vertical. Metaverse users create virtual avatars and photo-realistic models to enter augmented-reality web spaces. It means users can take their profiles into virtual dressing rooms to try on different items of clothing and see how it looks on them. This tech is called reactive reality. It compliments mixed reality, and it can solve an ongoing issue of the online shopping experience. By providing the ability to try out and try on the products. Partaking in this activity gives access to a lot of data points like figuring out the most popular body shape, items for upselling, and how a background like lighting helps to make purchases.
How can the Fashion Retail Industry Evolve with the Metaverse
In the coming years, most of us will be spending time as avatars in virtual worlds. Where we will need our avatars to be well-dressed and have a character. According to Forbes, brands like Nike and Gucci have established their presence and have sold the clothing line as NFT (non-fungible tokens). Fashion retail can undoubtedly offer an exciting shopping experience. Particularly those in Gen Z, exploring the possibilities of the retail metaverse. As the metaverse for retail is evolving, brands can learn new ways to market and stay in front of the target and engage with the audience in the digital world.
Attracting Gen Z and Alpha
Metaverse retail experiments aim to attract younger evangelists and Gen Z as well, who prefer the virtual world. This equation changes everything from the continuum of tech and reshaping business. Although, for most retailers, the metaverse is fuzzy and hard to understand. Hence not many have hands-on experience in accessing the virtual world. Metaverse is also often referred to as web3, which is the upcoming frontier for retail brands and marketing channels. About a third of iGen’ers said they would love to see their favorite brands develop virtual stores, where a brand can provide both, physical and digital experience, all under one roof.
Metaverse: A Hyper Interactive Space
There’s a lot of buzz and noise around the metaverse, we see the rise of digital environments where people work, play, games, socialize, and shop. Making it the best platform for tech-savvy and young evangelists to explore activities in a 3D simulated environment, creating a lot of digital footprints. These data points help to look at creativity, community building, and commerce in a new light.
