Virtual reality technology has appeared as a new effective tool for promoting and selling products or services in marketing. VR technology provides brands with new opportunities to communicate with consumers. Virtual reality technology is becoming more and more in demand by companies wishing to successfully market themselves, their product or service.
Every year virtual reality becomes more accessible and more enhanced. Given the benefits that virtual reality brings to the marketing realm, brands will be interested in the technology to successfully capture the consumer market.
Modern users of goods and services are fed up with standard adverts and it is difficult to surprise them with something new. In this case, virtual reality comes to the aid of brands, which makes it possible to achieve a greater emotional response from the audience than traditional advertising methods. VR technology allows consumers to feel in a different place or time, immerse themselves in advertising content and experience vivid impressions of interaction with the product.
The feeling of complete immersion in the product of the brand and the “wow” effect that VR technology brings to advertising – they both give a new exciting format of interactive advertising.
How does VR technology work in the promotion and sale of goods?
Virtual reality fits perfectly into the classic AIDA marketing model – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. The scheme implies a sequence of events leading to a purchase decision: attention – interest – need – action. The ultimate goal of any advertising is to attract the attention of a potential buyer, then create interest, which should develop into a desire to own a product and, further, an incentive to action – a purchase. All these marketing tasks are successfully solved by VR technology.
According to statistics from recent years, 62% of consumers believe that they will be more loyal to the products of a brand that offers a virtual reality experience. 71% of consumers position a brand that uses VR as promising. The more content becomes “feelable” for users, the more consumer engagement increases.
For example, Tom’s has placed a “virtual reality chair” in a shoe store in Venice, California. Visitors were invited to put on VR glasses to take a trip to a village in Peru. Users received positive impressions and subsequently shared their experience of interacting with virtual reality to other people. The store attracted new visitors in this way. Forbes named this example as one of the “6 Best VR Marketing Uses”.
