Shopping in a virtual supermarket
Big food companies are using a virtual supermarket to test the appeal of new products with shoppers.
Lumaten’s Shopper 360 software creates a virtual supermarket aisle for test customers to pretend to shop in, using a VR headset and a handheld wand.
The technology tracks what products the shoppers look at and then what they actually put in their trolley.
About 1000 shoppers have visited the the supermarket so far.
Lumaten co-founder Paul Fitzgerald said the virtual supermarket allowed food companies to test new products before putting them on shop shelves.
But a consumer market research expert said virtual reality did not test enough physical elements of a product for manufacturers to make calculated decisions.
Otago University marketing lecturer Robert Hamlin said the feel of a product influenced a consumer’s decision to buy.
So a digital supermarket did not create an environment where a shopper would behave the same as they would in a real supermarket, he said.
Fitzgerald said he was confident his virtual supermarket was an accurate test of consumer behaviour.
‘‘It understands how people make decisions to get to the heart of what they are doing, rather than asking them.’’
He said supermarkets put pressure on suppliers to come up with new products often and in short spaces of time.
This left companies with little time to think about what consumers wanted.
‘‘The flow on effect will be a better shopping experience. You will see maybe less products dropping in, but more that are relevant to shoppers.’’
Fitzgerald said he was in talks with large food and beverage dairy, snack and beverage brands because they were the only companies that could afford to use virtual reality for market research.
He would not name the companies involved.
Lumaten is raising $1.5 million on crowd funding platform Equitise in return for 20 per cent of the company.
Fitzgerald said the money would go towards wages for business and software developers.