Virtual reality supermarket to tests shopper behaviour

Friday, 29 September 2017

Lumaten is testing shoppers in a virtual reality supermarket to analyse their grocery picking habits.

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 what they put in their trolley. About 1000 shoppers have visited the the supermarket so far.

Imagine shopping in a virtual supermarket.

Lumaten co-founder Paul Fitzgerald said the virtual supermarket allowed food companies to test new products before putting them on shop shelves.

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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.'

Fitzgerald said he noticed food and beverage companies had a lack of understanding of shoppers' habits during his 20-years at Coca-Cola Amatil.

'Eighty five to 90 per cent of all new products fail because they do not succeed at cut through and attract shoppers.'

He said supermarkets put pressure on suppliers to come up with new products often and in short spaces of time, leaving companies with little time to think about what consumers want.

He said food and beverage companies needed to strike the happy medium between developing too many new products and too few.

'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.'

Foodstuffs spokeswoman Antoinette Laird said the cooperative's Pak 'n Save and New World supermarkets wanted more new products, not less.

Laird said virtual reality would give some insight into shoppers' habits but they liked to taste and feel new products, which the technology could not offer.

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 said he could 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.