Flipping the virtual flapjacks
Ikea jumps into the VR game at its Etobicoke location
Making pancakes is harder than it looks in the new virtual reality kitchen at Ikea in Etobicoke.
Wearing goggles and gripping a controller in each hand, customers are transported from a virtual reality box the size of a tool shed, located in the store’s kitchen department, into a small virtual kitchen, where they have to use the controllers to get milk and eggs from a fridge, and sugar and flour from the cupboards, and mix the mixture and set it to bake in the oven.
It takes a few minutes to become accustomed to working in virtual reality. Even with the coaching of an Ikea staffer, it’s dead easy to spill the sugar all over the virtual floor instead of pouring it into the virtual mixing bowl. And why are some ingredients so hard to get to in this kitchen anyway?
The point Ikea is trying to make is that how your kitchen is set up can have a huge impact on how easy it is or isn’t to work inside.
How that translates into more sales or better customer service is what Ikea is hoping to find out.
“It’s exciting, it’s fun to do, but at the end of the day, what we’re really interested in hearing about from customers is, does it really help,” said Rob Kelly, head of sales, Ikea Canada.
It’s hard to imagine a point in history that ever offered more new technology to retailers.
Virtual reality simulators like the one at Ikea can transport customers into limitless virtual worlds. Augmented reality allows shoppers to use a mobile phone to project 3D images of furniture into a customer’s living room.
(While virtual reality requires the use of a headset and one or two hand-held controllers and creates an immersive experience, augmented reality can be used more simply, using new, properly equipped mobile phones.)
Smart mirrors outside change rooms let customers trying on clothes shoot and send video clips of themselves to friends. Smart mirrors can suggest new ways to co-ordinate outfits, encouraging consumers to buy more items.
Smart shelves can provide consumers more information about what they are buying and retailers with information about how consumers shop.
But while retailers have shown an interest in bringing new technology to market, consumers are not always close behind, according to a poll of 1,145 adults conducted in January for GPShopper, a mobile commerce services company for retailers.
While 68 per cent of respondents said they were familiar with virtual reality, only 20 per cent were familiar with augmented reality — a technology that online-only retailers like Wayfair.com are betting will transform the marketplace.
Only 10 per cent were aware of smart mirrors.
And retailers who are too early to market can sometimes find themselves on the so-called “bleeding edge” of technologies that are unperfected or too expensive, said Alex Arifuzzaman, a partner in Interstratics Consultants Inc.
“At the end of the day, every retailer, every tool they bring in, they have to link it to increasing sales, increasing profit.”
Nonetheless, Arifuzzaman thinks a virtual reality experience in Ikea is a good fit.
“They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, well, virtual reality is worth 1,000 pictures. It has a deeper connection to the customer.”
Lowe’s was one of the first retailers to test a holoroom in Canada, in late 2014, according to Kyle Nel, executive director, Lowe’s Innovation Labs.
“We coined the phrase holoroom,” said Nel.
“They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, well, virtual reality is worth 1,000 pictures.” ALEX ARIFUZZAMAN INTERSTRATICS CONSULTANTS INC.
The holoroom at Lowe’s has been replaced by investments in augmented reality applications for specially equipped mobile phones that are now debuting in the marketplace.
While virtual reality is more immersive, at this point it remains relatively expensive and somewhat clumsy to use, especially when compared to the simplicity of using augmented reality with a mobile phone.
“The ambition was never to have these giant, cumbersome boxes as part of the store, the goal was to learn how people use virtual reality and augmented reality in a real way inside of a working home improvement store,” said Nel.
The virtual reality kitchen at Ikea offers two different experiences: cooking pancakes in virtual reality is meant to help customers gain an understanding of work flow in a kitchen and how it can be optimized.
The second experience is for customers who have already been through the kitchen-planning process at Ikea and want to bring the design to life, allowing them to move in virtual reality through their plans, to see how everything looks.
Maya Mikhailov, co-founder and chief marketing officer, GPShopper, believes Ikea is more likely to sell a $3,000 kitchen if it can get a consum- er to experience it and fall in love with it.
“It is definitely worth it for retailers to make this investment in their showrooms. You want to get it as close to reality as possible,” said Mikhailov.
Ikea hasn’t set any sales targets for the technology, not in this phase. For now, it wants to know whether using the virtual reality imaging will give consumers more confidence that buying an Ikea kitchen is the right choice.
“Right now it’s about learning for us and it’s seeing how the technology can support the business going forward,” said Ikea’s Kelly.
“I know there’s going to be lots of discussions here over the coming months, to see what the next steps are for us as a retailer and working with this technology.”