If you’ve ever spent Valentine’s Day with takeout and the fourth season of Friends, you’re not alone—and you too might agree that Singles Day sounds like an excellent idea.
In China, it’s a bona fide Big Deal. Singles Day falls on November 11th, and there, it serves as the equal and opposite of Valentine’s Day. Originally intended to celebrate single people—and encourage them to buy themselves presents, which is something we’d never argue with—it’s now turned into something bigger. This year, sales topped $17.79 billion in just 24 hours, which is more than Americans spent online last year on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. That’s why it’s not exactly a surprise that there’s a retailer behind this holiday. Alibaba, an e-commerce behemoth that’s like the Amazon of Asia, essentially created Singles Day.
Over the years, Singles Day has gone from celebrating singlehood to being the biggest shopping day of the year—whatever your relationship status happens to be. But this year is a little different: For the first time ever, shoppers are using virtual reality to see the goods and get IRL experiences from their couches. A week ago, Alibaba debuted Buy+, a virtual-reality headset that allow customers to visit virtual shops, which include U.S. stores, like Costco, Target, and Macy’s, as well as four other retailers based in Japan and Australia. With this headseat, you can browse as you would in any store and then stare at a product’s Buy Now button, which “clicks” it and pulls up the product information and shipping details. Yup, this sounds like something out of the Jetsons.
More tech innovations we're pumped about:
But while virtual-reality allows you to get up close and personal with the clothing, accessories, and home goods you’re shopping for, beauty is another story. It’s a more sensorial experience, which is why beauty companies set out products on their counters and allow you to test them on your own time. If you’re even bothering to make the effort to shop in-person, you’re probably doing it for a reason: You want to swatch the color, smell the notes of a fragrance, and feel whether a bouncy cream actually feels bouncy—right?
That’s what you’d think, at least. But the younger set is different, even here in the US. “Millennials shop much differently from my generation, who wanted to touch and feel and smell things,” explains Ron Friedman, a retail and merchandising consultant and partner at Marcum LLC. “They’re going to buy something through a computer, they’re going to feel it, and, if they don’t like it, they’re going to send it back.” Already, that age gap is clear from this year’s Singles Day. Of the eight million people who used Buy+ in the week leading up to it, 76 percent were under the age of 36. They still want to smell and touch things—but once it’s already paid for, and only in the comfort of their own homes.
And even though augmented reality has made strides in the last decade, it’s not like it can fully bring that in-store experience to you. “I don't think that there will be smell or texture extensions of virtual reality any time soon,” says Ken Perlin, professor of computer science at NYU and the director of its Media Research Lab in New York, NY. If you nerd out over stuff like this, there’s still hope. Perlin predicts that brick-and-mortar stores will combine textures and smells with virtual reality within the next few years. How, exactly, that’ll play out is uncertain at the moment, but it’s still something to anticipate.
With these slick technologies, we can’t help but be a little nostalgic (already) for the days of swatching lipstick on the back of our hands. Maybe we’re just dinosaurs, but half the fun of shopping for beauty products is the experience. Unless virtual reality is able to recreate that—or improve on it in some way—it may be some time before it fully takes over.
Speaking of lipstick, learn some hacks:
0 Response to "Singles Day Shopping Gets a Virtual-Reality Upgrade"
Post a Comment