In 2010, I had blogged about shopping online in my post Bricks and The Bytes. I was then surprised with myself that someone like me could buy air tickets, books to clothing from online retailers. This was no mean feat for someone of our generation who has witnessed the computers evolve to a common mans device. I was upbeat that bytes will completely overtake the bricks as far as shopping goes.
I have a dream today, I told myself borrowing from the famous speech by Martin Luther King, as wrote the post about the virtual shopping.
Having associated with design and construction since my college days I had seen the ins and outs of the way we create our shopping experience. I had dreamt that our physical shopping experience will undergo a paradigm shift from the way they do business and so will the online shopping. But what I have seen over the last 5 years saddens me. Our IT industry and online retailers have focused on expanding their customer bases and none to improve their experience. The tribe of physical malls on the other hand continued to grow and thrive unabated.
I have a dream that we could use the power of TV and Internet to select and pay for our clothes in a much smarter way than we do today. I hope there will be affordable 3D cameras available within our homes and devices that could take vital measurements of the purchaser. Those can transmits back that information in real time so that you could see yourself wearing that dress.
How wonderful experience it would be to see how well it fits or how suitable that dress is for you and all these happening in real time. The video in the clip below gives a fair idea of what things could be. There will be some ethical issues but those could be addressed.
I borrow from the same speech and shout out "Now is the time" to make some real improvement and take virtual shopping experience to the next level.
Eventually this is what it should lead to. Only capturing a huge customer base will not suffice. The experience will be the differentiating factor.
ReplyDeleteAnd how about the 3D printer that can print out the dress to me as soon as I have clicked on the check box of payment done?!
ReplyDeleteAll said and done, I am old school and I quite like the experience of a day out in a shop looking, feeling, admiring clothes, books and people.
I am old school too like Sujata, but my hubby who's a nerdy geeky fella gets excited with such notions too :)
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