Clear communication, effective presentations and convincing data are all critical to successfully securing new in-store ideas. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to check all those boxes. How do we continue line reviews and joint business planning when we we’re all working remotely, travel is discouraged, and the strain on the CPG industry from a budget and competition standpoint has only grown? Virtual technology is more important than ever to deliver a best-in-class meeting and effectively communicate in the context of the retail environment.
Here are 5 important benefits of adopting virtual solutions for effectively securing retailer buy-in:
Innovation centers go digitalInnovation centers have long been a great way to showcase and test new ideas in a risk-free retail setting. But they also come with a big price tag, and, more recently, the disadvantage of requiring teams and partners to meet in-person.
VR store simulations allow you to build a 3D store environment that can replace physical centers for virtual walk-throughs, department reinvention recommendations, and compelling in-store visualization of merchandising solutions. The worry and cost of travel and staying 6 feet apart is not a factor in virtual. Just invite your internal teammates and retail partners to a hyper-realistic virtual line review or JBP, where you can present your ideas and collaborate in real time.
Real-time, immersive presentationsWhat does a remote line review look like? With virtual, pretty awesome.
Share ideas, research study setups, and give live demos of your concepts through a live, online streaming presentation. Your audience sees exactly what you see without the lag of a typical video screen share. During joint business planning or line reviews, the virtual space allows your audience to give feedback and collaborate on changes as if you were all in the same room.
AgilitySpeaking of changes and feedback, one of the biggest advantages of adopting virtual technology for your sales and marketing strategies is how fast you can go from idea to decision. Unlike the physical world, VR simulations enable your teams and partners to make countless concept iterations, view changes, and make decisions quickly, without the risk and capital or labor expense.
Personalized experienceInContext’s VR retail software houses more than 50 retail store environments. This means you can present your concepts in your retail partners’ store, allowing them to see both the micro shelf layout, as well as a zoomed-out, macro view of the entire store space. Virtual is designed to create context around your ideas, and gives retailers a way to visualize your recommendations in their specific stores.
Convincing dataWhile immersive, streaming presentations and hyper-realistic store environments make a convincing presentation, nothing is more persuasive to retail partners than credible data. Because virtual testing enables behavioral and attitudinal shopper insights—validated to mirror real-world results—the data behind your decisions is not only predictive of real world results, but can be showcased in the context of the specific store.
Retail has been skewing toward solutions like these for a while now, but current events have made it even more apparent that virtual technology is essential as we go forward into an undefined future.
