Virtual reality and personalization: This will be the trends in retail for 2030

These are the main conclusions of Frost's report & Sullivan on the trends and perspectives that will change in the year 2030 consumer preferences and the proposition of physical stores in the retail environment.

Every day there is a greater dependence on technology in different areas and industries; Society has changed its preferences when purchasing and relies more and more on its electronic devices, which is causing a drastic transformation of physical stores.

In the case of the retail environment or retail stores, Technology allows us to offer consumers personalized experiences, a trend that will be key to improving the logistical efficiency of points of sale.

In Spain this transition is already happening and there are fewer and fewer physical stores, although they are larger and with greater technological integration. These businesses are in full evolution towards the digital world, transforming and adapting your processes to the cloud.

According to a report carried out by the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan and promoted by Dassault Systèmes, only the 23% of consumers indicate that they will make absolutely all their online purchases in 2030. The vast majority of those surveyed continue to believe that they are going to go to physical stores, but the appearance of these will not be what we are used to.

The use of augmented and virtual reality technologies will totally change the consumer's experience when purchasing. It will be possible to test products virtually and check how they feel in different scenarios. For example, Trying on a swimsuit is not the same as seeing yourself in the mirror of the store's fitting room., to see how you would look on the beach with the help of virtual reality technologies.

Stores will have to adapt their businesses to new technological trends in order to survive this new era of change., and the combination of a physical and digital shopping experience is the key to success. Physical stores will no longer be local with an infinite number of products on display, sino showrooms that will offer immersive experiences that will not be available online.

In the logistics field there will also be big changes, where robots will replenish the shelves and provide the products that the customer requests. Payments will be made almost entirely electronically., with the help of cutting-edge facial recognition technologies.

Another trend in the retail environment for 2030 is to personalize products to the needs and tastes of the consumer and companies such as ECCO They already implement this type of technologies to adapt their products to each of their clients..

The innovation laboratory of this footwear design company has developed a sophisticated algorithm to make a digital twin of each consumer's foot and thus create personalized soles with the help of 3D printing technologies.. These types of features will be increasingly present not only in products, also in services that will offer benefits that meet the user's requests.