The Emerging Trends in Retail and the Metaverse

By Simon Hathaway, Group Managing Director, EMEA, Outform

The metaverse: it’s THE big thing right now, and businesses are falling over themselves to step into this world and monetise it. Unsurprisingly, given their survival depends on shifting goods, retail, FMCG and fashion brands are leading the charge: Gucci, Coca-Cola, H&M and Nike are just four big names already making inroads into the metaverse with fast evolving ecommerce strategies.

It’s not as new as it seems; arguably, consumers have been experiencing the metaverse for some time, most prolifically in the world of gaming. Roblox and Fortnite have long offered businesses opportunities to reach new audiences with innovative product and transactional solutions as well as partnerships.

What’s different now is that companies like Meta (formerly Facebook) are moving the metaverse towards a much more decentralised iteration and it’s this that is a more marked shift for retailers and brands. It’s also a shift in which tools such as AR and VR, which have been slowly earning ubiquity over past years, could become commonplace.

Exciting though this is however, there are some considerations to take into account, not least budget and timing.

Are we there yet?

The metaverse is still too bleeding edge to be meaningful in the near future. Though some of the technology is in place, we are witnesses to an experimental stage. Varied moving parts are still buffeting the space into a consumer-friendly form.

As ever, one of those parts is consumer behaviour. When it comes to ecommerce, it’s not yet clear how much tangible value shopping in the metaverse will provide to consumers in the real world.

There’s an expectation that most goods and products available in the metaverse will also be for sale in the physical realm. How that’s likely to look is still moot. Will users be able to purchase Nike sneakers in a bundled solution with a physical pair? Can an avatar’s outfit be reproduced in the real world? Or will an avatar simply wear and use products exclusive to the metaverse?

Then there’s the explosion of NFTs, primarily when it comes to the ownership of digital goods. But also as retailers like Selfridges start selling NFTs over the counter, in efforts to combine physical shopping with digital fashion in ways that feel familiar to consumers.

Though blockchain technology will provide value for such assets, currently NFTs acquire value only as soon as they become pieces of art – or if they are paired with products and experiences in the physical world. NFT.Kred is just one of the numerous platforms offering NFT solutions to brands – and NFT ticketing, which stores physical event ticketing information on a unique blockchain token, is among the many services on offer. If used in tandem with physical goods or services, NFTs in the metaverse may become more than just a bandwagon for brands to jump on.

It’s this relationship between the emerging metaverse and the physical world that’s currently most attractive to consumers. They’re still interested in visiting physical stores to trial products before they buy, as indicated by Outform’s own research (six-in-ten shoppers prefer to shop for beauty offline, for example). So physical retail is by no means dead – though admittedly, much of it badly needs an entirely different approach if it’s to build resilience.

If retailers are planning to silo off the metaverse as its own ecosystem, they will set themselves up for failure. Separating virtual and physical will put them at a disadvantage, hindering them from cutting through the noise and standing out in what may become yet another version of a crowded high street – albeit virtual.

The solution is the digital handshake

Having pointed out the teething issues of the metaverse, it’s important to stress that it’s not to be ignored, certainly not from an ecommerce perspective.

As it becomes more sophisticated, consumers will have the opportunity to purchase wherever they are, from any part of the world. In time, we’ll be able to turn to a friend we met in the metaverse for the smallest things, from shopping advice to a referral on the best banking partner. Eventually, physical and virtual may well blend into the same experience, with every single piece of marketing communication plugging retail into its operations.

With QR codes and contactless payments, it is already easier than ever to revolutionise the way we shop, pay and experience retail across all stages of the buying process. Livestream shopping and touchless stores are already – finally – kickstarting the unification of online and physical shopping so it’s no longer really valid to treat physical retail and online shopping as two separate entities.

There’s no question that the evolution of the metaverse will supercharge this. And the fact that we’re at the birth of the next digital innovation means we have first-mover advantage – a genuine opportunity to create a cohesive ecommerce strategy that integrates physical with virtual.