Retail Meets VR: How Virtual Reality Is Shaping the Shopping Experience

What is Virtual Reality (VR)?

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that creates a computer-generated, three-dimensional environment that allows users to immerse themselves in and interact in real time. Using devices like headsets, gloves, or sensors, VR translates a person’s movements into the virtual space, making the experience feel realistic and responsive. These environments can be built from real-world imagery or entirely through computer graphics, allowing people to explore everything from simulated workplaces to fantastical worlds, or even interconnected spaces like the Metaverse.

How Does VR Work?

Simply put, VR replaces the real-world environment with a realistic 3D environment. To create the most immersive experience and ensure that the virtual world resembles its natural environment as closely as possible, the tech utilizes AI algorithms and machine learning (ML).

AI and ML project new elements onto a mathematically calculated surface. They enhance graphics rendering, provide a more natural and personalized user experience, all while tracking real-world objects.

Sometimes, the terms Augmented Reality (AR) and VR are used interchangeably. This isn’t entirely correct, as VR and AR are significantly different. VR replaces the real-world environment with a virtual one, but AR only adds or overlays digital elements onto the real world.

Personalized Customer Experience

Most businesses collect a large amount of data to identify patterns, customer preferences, and forecast trends. Such data can also be utilized to create personalized, immersive VR experiences, such as customized product recommendations. Making customers feel valued and cared for is how you build loyalty, retain existing buyers, and differentiate yourself from competitors.

Stronger Customer Engagement

Investing properly in customer engagement fosters a strong relationship with your buyers beyond purchases. Facilitating quality engagement with customers is how you build a strong emotional connection with them, keep your hard-won members, and most important of all, keep your brand at the top of their mind.

There are plenty of ways to engage customers, but make sure you don’t overlook VR or AR. Customers can experience your services and products, even from the comfort of their homes, with VR and AR.

Virtual Showrooms and Improved Product Visualization

Today’s retail landscape no longer considers brick-and-mortar stores a must-have. Online-only shops have become more and more common. While this retail mode saves costs on rent and maintenance, it does limit customer interaction with the product.

With VR technologies, this concern will be significantly reduced. You can create a virtual showroom with an immersive environment, where customers can experience the product for a more confident and informed purchase decision. Ensuring a consistent VR experience can also boost conversion rates and ultimately boost online sales.

Immersive Training Experience

VR plays a significant role in reshaping the customer experience within a business. However, it can also reshape experiences within the retail company, which in this case, is training employees.

Training staff with immersive VR technologies allows businesses to accurately assess the ability to perform the job while also giving the trainee a chance to experience the stress in real-life situations.

In a VR training session, for example, new employees are asked to deal with an angry customer or trained to handle long lines of customers during peak seasons like Black Friday or Christmas.

High Upfront Investment

Despite VR’s continuous evolution, it is still among the more expensive technologies. Several factors contribute to the high numbers:

• Complex hardware. VR experiences come with a headset, but that’s only the beginning. The key to a VR system involves numerous tracking sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes. HMDs incorporate high-resolution displays, lenses for wide views, and real-time stereoscopic 3D graphics. To ensure the smoothest experience possible, manufacturers need to use expensive display components, e.g., OLED or AMOLED. These requirements lead to a need for a powerful GPU to render high-quality 3D graphics in real-time, handle AI and ML algorithms, and other tracking, sensors, and audio systems.
• VR application development. VR and AR need specific software development kits to develop apps that produce such immersive and unique experiences. These tools come with licensing or subscription fees, but that’s not the most costly part yet. Developing VR apps requires time and significant human resources – a 3D modeler, cross-platform development capabilities, and a team with design and animation capabilities.
• Economy of scale. Unlike other electronics, VR has not yet become a mainstream device to benefit from mass production. The complex hardware, long development and research hours still keep its costs high, despite VR tech reaching beyond the gaming industry and being applied in other fields.

Complex Implementation

Implementing VR is no easy feat. While we do wish it were as simple as plugging the device in and using it, the setup and implementation are long and sometimes frustrating. A few examples of the integration process include:

• System integration. VR systems must connect seamlessly with product databases, inventory and fulfillment engines, and mobile/web applications.
• Cross-platform performance. The VR experience needs to be smooth and intuitive across different devices and operating systems, from iOS and Android to desktop platforms.
• User experience consistency. Delivering a reliable and engaging interaction is crucial. Users expect the same quality whether they do online shopping, use the VR headset in-store or on their mobile devices.
• Technology maturity gap: Many retailers are still working on basic improvements like mobile responsiveness and omnichannel consistency.

Mixed Consumer Reaction

It’s safe to say that the majority of users have not yet adapted to VR and AR technologies. Yes, millennials and Gen Z have shown interest in the tech and even actively use it in different settings, but it’s still only a small number of the population. Shopping is often viewed as a transactional activity – scan the aisles or online stores for the item, add it to the cart, then pay and leave. Virtual try-ons are interesting, but they won’t be considered a necessary part of a speedy shopping trip.

IKEA’s Virtual Showrooms

IKEA launched IKEA Kreativ – a digital design space using a wide array of technology, including mixed realities, spatial computing, and machine learning.

This virtual showroom provides its users with a comprehensive 3D shopping experience, including:

• Exploring IKEA products in over 50 inspirational 3D showrooms.
• Designing and trying out products in lifelike spatial settings.
• Using IKEA Kreativ Scene Scanne to create editable 3D replicas of personal spaces.
• Using the IKEA App to ‘erase’ existing furniture, position new IKEA furnishings, and swap alternatives.
• Imagine a home life from anywhere by adding products to your cart, saving design ideas, and sharing them with family and friends.

The experience doesn’t end there. Customers’ virtual rooms are stored in the cloud, allowing for in-store shopping.

Puma’s Mixed-Reality Sneaker Shopping

Puma partnered with Meta to launch a mixed-reality shopping experience on Meta Quest headsets. Shoppers can explore a virtual storefront, interact with the new basketball shoe, and even measure their foot size using modern controllers. By blending physical and digital elements through WebXR, Puma is reimagining online shopping as an immersive, interactive experience that goes beyond traditional e-commerce.

VR Test Drives by Volvo

Volvo engineers use a VR-powered simulator featuring Varjo’s mixed-reality headset, Unity’s 3D platform, and a Teslasuit to test safety and autonomous driving features. Drivers can operate real cars on real roads while experiencing simulated traffic scenarios. This allows Volvo to test collision-avoidance technologies, study driver behavior, and accelerate innovation, all in a safe, cost-effective environment.

VR in Retail Education at the University of Arizona

Although this example is not directly related to how VR is applied in the retail industry, it shows how VR is used to understand and elevate the retail-related experiences. At the University of Arizona, retailing and consumer science students are learning how store design influences shopping behavior using a virtual “digital twin” of the Lundgren Consumer Science Lab.

Wearing VR headsets, students can walk through realistic virtual aisles, rearrange shelves, adjust product displays, and track shopper movements in real time. This immersive lab allows them to test merchandising strategies and analyze consumer behavior in ways that wouldn’t be possible in a traditional classroom. By blending real-world data with VR simulations, students gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge retail technology and gain practical skills to enter the ever-evolving retail industry.

Identify VR Use Case

Start with a clear goal. Why did you decide to implement retail for your retail business? Are you using VR for:

• An enhanced visitor experience during special sales events?
• Training sales staff?
• For marketing purposes, where can you guide customers through digital catalogs and familiarize themselves with a product before they decide to close a deal?

Whatever your goal for using VR is, make sure to keep it at the forefront of every decision-making process.

Research the Target Audience and Competitors

After nailing down the key goals, try clarifying by identifying your target audience and competitors.

• Target Audience. Who are you building this for? Are you targeting in-store shoppers, online buyers, or both? Think about how they will engage with the VR experience. Will they come to your showroom, or access it via mobile app? The answers to these questions will influence how the project proceeds.
• Accessibility. What platforms should your VR experience support? Do you prioritize premium VR headsets or a more accessible experience through smartphones and web browsers? Remember, accessibility decisions can affect adoption rates.
• Competition. Research your competitors and how they are applying VR. Are they offering virtual try-ons, where consumers can try-before-you-buy, or do they mainly use VR for training? Understanding how your competitors use the tech can help you spot gaps and differentiate yourself from the rest.

Balance Experience and Cost

Not every VR project needs the same setup. If you’re running a campaign for the public, simple mobile-based headsets might do the job without breaking the budget. But if you’re building a long-term training tool for employees, higher-quality headsets with better resolution and interactivity can deliver stronger engagement and knowledge retention.

The key is to balance cost with quality. Affordable options already exist for short experiences, while premium headsets like Oculus or HTC Vive can create immersive, game-like environments for bigger projects. As the technology keeps evolving, VR doesn’t have to be out of reach; retailers can scale experiences to match both budget and audience needs.

Understand the Development Process

You might be carrying out the previous steps on your own, but at this stage, you’ll often need help from a professional VR development team. They will do most of the heavy lifting, but understanding the process helps you monitor and keep the project under control.

• Design: This stage gathers all the information, including requirements, ideas, research, and available resources. The UX team then creates the interface and tests it directly in the VR environment.
• Asset Creation: 3D elements bring the VR world to life. The team develops environments, objects, and visuals that shape the user’s experience.
• Start with an MVP: Rather than going all-in from the start, create a minimum viable product. It allows you to validate your idea early and reduce risk before scaling up.
• Carefully Calculate Costs: Factor in both development and hardware costs, as they can vary widely depending on quality and use case. Always align spending with your goals and expected ROI.
• Test, Review, Deploy: Extensive testing ensures the app runs smoothly and delivers on requirements. Only then should you launch it to your intended audience.