In Part I, we discussed examples of augmented reality best practice in any general retail environment. This post will now address Part II: How to tackle retail challenges, specifically food retail marketing, with augmented reality. Much has been said about how technology can help bridge the growing gap between retail and digital, however this will be taken to a new level through the incorporation of AR.

If used correctly, AR marketing will do wonders for your business. Not only does it promote the notion that your business is at the forefront of technology, but it also creates a more efficient, effective and engaging experience for your customers.

Aside from the previously mentioned points in Part I, the following are specific ways to use augmented reality in food retail marketing.

Recipe Calculator
An obstacle that many tend to face when cooking a meal, especially for a dinner party, is knowing the necessary amount of ingredients for a recipe. Augmented reality offers a solution to this.

When a customer sees a delicious recipe in a supermarket magazine, they can scan the page and select the number of people to cook for. This would display the exact amount of ingredients needed to suit the party. Not only does this make the whole shopping experience easier, but it saves time, money and prevents waste.

Suggest A Meal
Have a favourite vegetable? Customers can use the Layar app on a particular product, and see complementary products that pair well with it. For instance, scanning a page with a red pepper will bring up delicious compatible ingredients, like sun-dried tomatoes and chorizo.

This allows individuals to spice up their usual recipes and ingredient pairs in an innovative and fun manner. Similarly, this encourages customers who have little experience in the kitchen to explore and experiment with new foods and products.

Helpful GIFs
You should also embed helpful GIF animations into your food publications. For example, scanning a recipe page with onions as an ingredient will lead to an animation demonstrating a method of cutting onions without tearing up. This would help those with little experience in the kitchen to master the basic cooking skills, essentially making the whole process simple and fun. Additionally, it adds value to the AR content and diversifies it from promo videos and discounts.

South African food magazine, Food & Home Entertaining, is a prime augmented reality case study. For their Christmas issue, scanning each page provided customers with animations on how to recreate delectable treats - making the festival season that much more fun and interactive.

Price Comparisons
Shoppers like to know that they are getting the best price for what they are buying, and augmented reality is an ideal way to demonstrate that. You should incorporate an HTML widget which clearly displays the price of a specific product compared to other brands, which will easily sway consumer decisions. This would allow your business to position your brand as more affordable than others, thus establishing yourself as the price-leader. It also adds to transparency and openness in communication with stakeholders.

Special Deals Around You
The best two combinations to customers are “food” and “special deals”. If you’re running special deals or discounts on specific products - advertise it! This would promote customer reach and push customers to your store, giving you an advantage over your competitors. This would make it both more efficient and intuitive for shoppers to find the best deals at any given moment, wherever they may be.

Stay tuned for the last part of this blog series discussing augmented reality best practice. Part III will address how to use augmented reality to increase social interactions and brand loyalty, as well as trigger customer feedback flow and communication.

Interested in adding a layer of augmented reality to your campaign? Contact us here.

In our last blog post we revealed some of the retail marketing challenges a major retailer has tackled by integrating Augmented Reality (AR) into their mobile app. Did you download the case study?

Now we’ll show some examples of specific use cases to achieve a variety of marketing goals with AR. Contact us for a tailored approach and extra examples fitting your retail business.

Interactive mannequins
Wondering how to make the shopping experience more fun and engaging, raise brand loyalty and facilitate your mobile app use?

Why not use interactive mannequins placed in the store? Your customers can scan a marker on a mannequin (for example, a t-shirt) and directly try out different item combinations, browse size availability in the store and purchase items with a few taps.

Scannable posters
Similar to making physical items scannable, posters give you the opportunity to engage customers on their mobiles inside or outside of the store.

Place scannable posters inside the store so app users can see where to find items around the aisles, what colors (or flavors) they come in, or even purchase them right away after reading about them or trying them on. Make your store “always-in-stock.”

Posters by cashiers
Queueing and mobile phones go together nowadays. Make that waiting time valuable for your customers and they will be thankful.

If you have contests, promotion codes or discount offers, this is the perfect time to introduce customers to them. It will also increase app downloads and sessions as you can get them to focus on the experiences you provide. This moment is also a great opportunity to get them acquainted with your new app features and explain how to use Augmented Reality.

Scannable offers on items

Some items not selling well or do you want to push an offer? Add a code customers can reveal after scanning an item which the cashier can reimburse with a discount, extra value points or a gift.

Store locator
The store locator feature is what it sounds like – an intuitive way for customers to get to their favorite shop. Through a Geo Layer, your loyal customers can quickly and easily find your nearest shop when they are in a new area or country.

360-Degree Product View
Whether in your catalogue, poster or offer leaflet, an image of a product can be seen in 3D through scanning. Your customers can rotate and zoom it to see all angles so there is no doubt that they want it. This will help them to form a stronger opinion and make a decision.

This is a series of blog posts illustrating the vast variety of use cases depending on your strategy, goals and business type.

Don’t miss Part II next week when we’ll focus specifically on Food Retail marketing with Augmented Reality, and showcase more examples of how to tackle retail challenges with AR.

Part III will discuss how to increase social interactions and brand loyalty as well as trigger customer feedback flow and communication.

Contact us if you want to talk to us about integrating our Augmented Reality SDK to your retail mobile app.

To keep pace with the latest innovation trends in retail and ecommerce, a lot of businesses are looking into what’s hot in 2016. Last year, Augmented Reality often appeared at the top of that list, and now more and more retailers are embracing the power of AR to create a complete omnichannel experience.

In this post we’ll reveal how a major UK retailer has benefitted from integrating AR into their mobile apps, including what steps have been taken and the results observed until now.

In-Store Experience Combined With Online and Mobile

One of the main concerns retailers are facing and what has proven to be a winning tactic if successful is merging the online digital experience with the in-store experience. Stores digital integration is the step retailers need to take but many wonder what the solution is.

To tackle the challenge House of Fraser, one of the UK’s largest retail brands, introduced shoppable windows during Black Friday last year. The initiative brought amazing results as well as valuable insights into shopping patterns.

Boosting Sales During AND Before/After Opening Hours

Another constant goal retailers have is to make it easier for customers to go through the purchasing cycle and return satisfied. Higher conversion rate, engagement and retention are important but usually tricky points of the marketing strategy.

Mobile has been the next step to keep customers’ attention on the go, and now there is even more to add. In 2015, House of Fraser added Augmented Reality to its iOS app, leveraging the Layar AR SDK integrated into the app commerce platform Poq to bring actual results and build on for the future.

What did implementing AR into their app bring to the retailer? More details on the results above and some further insights into the consumer’s mind can be found in a case study we have put together with app commerce platform Poq and House of Fraser.

Contact us to learn how your business can benefit from the full power of the Layar AR SDK.

In September we told you about House of Fraser, one of the UK’s largest department store chains, and how it was using the Layar SDK to bring Augmented Reality to its customer retail experience. The store allowed customers to browse its online store from a print catalogue by scanning with the Layar SDK-powered House of Fraser mobile app.

With the Layar SDK, you can quickly and easily embed our Augmented Reality technology into your existing mobile app, giving you the ability to create a custom AR experience for your users within your app.

Now, HoF is back again with more great interactive content – this time in the form of shoppable windows for this year’s Black Friday promotions. The windows will launch on Wednesday, November 25th in stores across the UK and Ireland and will feature instructions for customers to download the House of Fraser app to access the shoppable windows journey.

A “Scan to Explore” feature on the House of Fraser iOS mobile app is triggered by scanning the window displays, which will allow customers to shop the best Black Friday deals in just a few taps, avoiding the busy queues inside the stores. A “Scan to win” feature will also be available so that customers can be in entered into a competition to win a £250 House of Fraser gift card.

To help guide customers and highlight the new technology, Black Friday “angels” will be on hand on November 27th in the top 14 stores across the UK and Ireland demonstrating to customers just how easy it is to scan the displays and to interact with the immersive content on the House of Fraser app.

“The event is a natural next step for House of Fraser on the path of setting trends in digital retail following previous trials of their app’s Augmented Reality features earlier this year,” said Hsio Ling Hee, Head of Custom Solutions at Layar/Blippar. “The new HoF app, powered by the Layar SDK, has a lot more to offer in the future and we are confident they will continue being one of the leaders of innovation for digital and Augmented Reality retail.”

Shoppers in the UK and Ireland can download the House of Fraser app for iOS here.

South African cafe chain vida e caffè has partnered with Dubai Tourism and the Atlantis, The Palm resort in Dubai to launch an innovative augmented reality contest with Layar.

Thanks to the help of local Layar Certified Partner Digital Narrative, vida e caffè is offering its customers the chance to win an all-expenses-paid five-night stay in the luxurious resort by scanning its coffee cups.

Over 330,000 cups have been adorned with a special sleeve made interactive with Layar. Coffee drinkers can scan the cups with the Layar App to see a video about the resort and enter for a chance to win the trip.

“As a brand we are always looking for innovative ideas and concepts to leverage from,” said Andrea Calitz, Marketing Manager, vida e caffè. “Our coffee cup sleeves are a popular media space and we were looking for a way to take this concept to the next level. Our goal is to show potential brands and customers out there that the vida cup sleeve is a great addition to any media or brand strategy.”

“It’s great to work with partners that are willing to push the envelope and try new things to engage their customers,” said Johan Walters, Director, Digital Narrative. “With Augmented Reality we are making the print media digitally relevant to the consumer. And at the same time, create something innovative and exciting for the customer.”

They brand has even enlisted the talents of some local YouTube celebrities to promote the contest with their unique brand of humor.

The contest is currently running throughout the month of September, so if you’re in South Africa, head over to a vida e caffè location and enter to win!