The mall-hopping, smartphone-wielding Gen-Y or millennials (born in the 1980s) are currently the primary focus of marketing groups from various industries such as automobiles, healthcare and consumer goods. Big data is empowering these marketing professionals by providing reliable data insights on numbers rather than the existing guessing game propelled by human intuition.
We are seeing the proliferation of pop-up stores and e-commerce initiatives from multiple industries to cater to the demands of the millennials.
But this still might not be adequate as we will have the incoming Generation-Z (born in the 1990s) exhibiting unique characteristics. Traditional marketing will not apply to the Gen-Z as they are more smartphone-dependent than the millennials. They consume more of YouTube, rather than traditional television. They are more prone to discuss their fundamental desires indirectly while chatting with a friend or in a tweet or a status update or an Instagram post.
Their demands will not be easily decipherable and they will look for instant gratification in any product they wish to use. It is this group that will shape the future direction of multiple industries.
We can illustrate the need for a new marketing approach for Gen-Z considering an industry, say, automotive.
In this industry, the concept of a pop-up stores in malls was created as the brands wanted to get closer to the customer (mostly millennials) by offering a feel of the product experience offered by the OEM (original equipment manufacturer, say, Volvo, Mercedes and so on).
However, even such a pop-up store will not appeal to Gen-Z as it does not allow it the chance to interact with the product by customising the vehicle as per their needs. It is precisely here that the impact of the relatively nascent field of augmented reality (AR) can be fully felt.
AR is essentially an extension of virtual reality (VR) where the blending of virtual reality and real life happens.
AR can provide several configuration options and help OEM/dealerships to present vehicles to the public anywhere — movie theatre, public park, tech park, mall and, in fact, even the customer’s own living room. It will improve the sales personnel’s ability to upsell as he/she can very easily show the upgrade that a Vehicle B offers from Vehicle A to the customer.
Even moving away from marketing, the actual driving experience can be bettered by AR.
Information such as directions, traffic, weather conditions and incoming messages, can be displayed on the windshield as heads-up display (HUD). Such information will improve safety as it will negate the need for the driver to take his eye away from the road for checking the details.
The ‘Hyundai Genesis’ 2015 model has such an HUD option where driving information such as cruise-control status, blind-spot info and lane-departure warnings are displayed. Hyundai is looking at linking the HUD to a wearable band in the future.
In fact, AR has the ability to disrupt a multitude of industries as it can allow a customer to see within the product’s packaging without dismantling/opening it.
Going one step further, it can put people virtually in the midst of the environments where they can interact with the product they wish to buy before deciding. Just like how scanning a barcode will either navigate to a website or show more information, AR can be act on similar visual triggers to give viewers an immersive video experience of the product.
VR/AR playersThe most popular player in the AR-VR bandwagon is Google Glass in spite of the project being shut down due to concerns regarding privacy, performance and negative publicity. After that, Google switched its attention to Magic Leap, investing heavily in the company which is working on a “mixed-reality” device. The device aims at simulating a virtual world according to its surroundings attempting to construct a light-field chip using silicon photonics. It is a highly secretive project having funding from Qualcomm and Alibaba, in addition to Google.
Close behind this is the Microsoft Hololens, essentially smart glasses which come with an inbuilt Windows 10 computer and advanced sensors. The device blends 3D holographic content into the user’s physical world, enabling an immersive experience for the user with both the digital content as well as the real objects.
There is another vital player, Oculus VR, whose product is the very popular Oculus Rift. This product, although initially focused towards gaming, is making its presence felt in the automotive sector with OEMs such as Volvo, Ford, Audi and Toyota using it for various purposes. The company was in the news when it was acquired by Facebook in 2014. The company worked with Samsung to develop the Samsung Gear VR headset for Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, which was released to the public to glowing reviews towards the end of 2015. The company acquired the British 3D scene-mapping and reconstruction company Surreal Vision to make way into the AR space as a competitor to Microsoft Hololens.
Other illustrious companies such as Sony and HTC are also in the space with their products such as PlayStation VR and HTC Vive, respectively.
World is moving to VR – ARThe year 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the Pokémon games. Nintendo along with Niantic released Pokémon Go — a free Augmented Reality mobile game on both the iOS and Android platforms at the beginning of July 2016 in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and more than 30 countries in Europe officially.
The game has taken the world by storm, sealing its position as the top grossing app on the US App store. It is accumulating users by the second and its popularity is such that people are spending more time on it than Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, according to various analytics reports.
It is interesting to note that while the old world of Pokémon has been embellished by AR technology to cater to Gen-Z, the older Gen-X and Millennials are embracing the game like never before as it allows them to relive their Pokémon adventures by projecting the world of Pokémon into the streets of the real world. There are no prizes for guessing what the world is moving towards!