The world’s largest e-commerce marketplace Alibaba Group plans to open a virtual reality (VR) demonstration shop. It aims to rollout the technology across its entire platform.
Alibaba’s 400 million customers will soon be able to buy products from stores all over the world, by wearing a VR headset to simulate a physical store shopping experience. Alibaba has said that it is selling over 300,000 units of VR gears every month.
The virtual store has a digital store assistant that greets shoppers and recommends new products based on their past shopping history and customer preference. Shoppers can rotate products by moving a controller and ask a model to show how a product works or how it’s worn.
VR and Augmented Reality (AR), the technology that Pokémon Go uses, are hot topics at the moment in the technology industry.
Increasingly we are seeing retailers, especially e-commerce players such as Alibaba and eBay, starting to use these technologies to enhance online shopping experiences.
Alibaba’s heavy investment in VR and its active role in driving the VR ecosystem is expected to lead to a broad rollout of the service in the near future.
