Augmented Reality Next Generation. The future of customer experience

• Autor(a) principal: Neto, João Filipe Pacheco
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/164324
• topic: Augmented Reality; Immersion; Customer Experience; Retail; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática

The constant evolution of technology makes it hard for many companies to keep up with the trends and adapt to the shifts in the consumer’s needs. One of the latest trends in the technology world is the use of mixed reality to enhance both brand productivity as well as customer experience. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are the two most prominent technologies in this field, given their potential to create unique and immersive experiences. Although increasingly more popular, these technologies are yet to reach their potential to change the way we live our everyday lives. Retail is a prime example of an industry that is both benefiting greatly from the transition to digitalandalso suffering from it. Withthe rise of ecommerce, many consumers choose to shop using online retailers instead of going to the physical stores. The convenient and easy access to information and a wide variety of products from the comfort of their homes makes it hard to justify the trip to a traditional shop. This leads to the decay of in-store shopping culture, but also opens the opportunity to merge the physical and the online aspects of shopping to create unique experiences. Taking this into consideration, our objective with this project is to provide the customers at SL Benfica’s store (as t_insight is Benfica’s Digital Marketing and Design Agency) with a unique AR experience that captivates them and motivates them into coming back to the store. AR headsets and smart glasses are an up-and-coming trend that allows users to experience AR in a more natural way, while also bringing a new level of immersion, but these devices are still out of reach for much ofmuch of the population. By combining the well established mobile AR technologies with a smartphone head-mounted display, we created a system capable of both traditional hand-held experiences, and immersion like a dedicated AR device. The versatility inherent to our solution makes it suitable for many scenarios, including tackling the problems affecting traditional retail stores. Our application will keep the customers engaged by having multisensory events across the store, introducing the "wow" factor, as well as providing all the information they need to make the best purchasing decisions.