Virtual Reality Clothes Shopping: The Future Of Shopping

The future of shopping is going to transform more in the next 20 years than it has in the past 1000. Thanks to advances in technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics, shopping for clothing is going to be extremely different than it is today.

If you remember from 1995, the movie Clueless Cher goes into her closet and she looks at her computer, which is actually a database of everything in her closet, and that's how she picks out her outfit.

And that was actually extremely visionary when it comes to the future of clothing and shopping, because thanks to data, thanks to virtual reality, our shopping experiences in a store will be much different than it is today. When it comes to online shopping today, it's actually quite a flawed experience, because size is a real problem.

You might order five of the same dress just to figure out what size you are, but with advances inaugmented reality you'll be able to figure out your size without having to return five items to the seller, and so shopping for clothing in the future will be extremely personalized and much less effort for both the customer and the company who today has to deal with this nightmare of returns and e-commerce.

The Future of Voice-Activated Assistants

The voice-activated assistant will only grow in its ability to understand what the customer wants and needs. For example, you might tell your voice activated assistant, Hey Alexa, I have a date tonight. I need an outfit to go to the beach and the activated assistant will tell you exactly what to wear, or maybe even deliver it to your door without having to do much effort.

In the future we'll see even more of a voice-activated assistant in the home, and the truth is that humans can process images 60 times faster than text. So we'll see more virtual assistants coupled with imagery on a screen that can help customers choose whether it's retail or finding what to shop for for dinner that night.

The Future of Supply Chain Logistics

The fact that people want things instantly is not going to change, but the methods to getting those items will absolutely change. And we're already starting to see companies like Amazon play with the idea of drone delivery, because it's more environmentally and even scalable than cars today.

So in the future we can expect to see even more instant delivery, but scaling that is extremely hard for companies, but it could be even under 30 minutes. So I think in the future we'll continue to see more experimentation with getting people items faster, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner.

Robots are already starting to change how employees and customers interact in a store, and we can only expect more robots and robotic process automation in different areas of the business, like supply chain logistics. We can only expect to see more robots making their way into our customer experiences. But it's not going to be easy, because even today, employees that have to manage the robots in stores like Walmart are very frustrated with the liquidity of these robots and also the monotony of having to do this day in and day out.

Because today we have everything we could ever want from our fingertips, whether that's a Netflix show or ordering food to our couch. And in the future we'll see even more on demand products and services. So it will be even harder to get people away from their homes, and so in the future brick and mortar will be more about experiences.

It's about getting people out of the house that compels them to actually go somewhere and do something. We'll see more concept stores, like we see from Nordstrom today, where there's actually no transactions happening at the brick and mortar location. It's more about providing a different, elevated experience. That's about teaching somebody something or giving them something they cannot get from their own home.

People Still Craving Human Interaction

And it's also about community, because people still need people, and even if we have a technology powered society in the future, people still crave human interaction and we have to leave the house to get that. In the future, we won't see less people to people interaction.

We're going to see more because studies show that people make other people happy. And while we have all these advances in technology, we'll have robots, AI and automation. People still crave human interaction and we're going to see that people miss it when they have too much technology in their daily life. So we will see more human interaction because people will crave it and they will demand it from the experiences that they have.