In one of the warm sunny mornings of 2016, New York’s central park was flooded by a sea of young crowd, screaming the names of Pokémon characters. This phenomenon was not just restricted to the avenues of New York; it had spread globally. The new mobile application Pokémon Go had immortalized the 90s gaming exuberance by bringing it to the real life. It was for the first time that people around the world came across the term Augmented Reality, which was hidden under the aegis of Virtual Reality. Now that the Pokémon Go fad has been ebbed, the tech world needs to ponder over the learning that it has left. It indeed was the first social experiment with AR that has created a new breed of customer like no other application in the past.
Augmented Reality, which has remained in the shadows of VR since the 1960s, exploded after the Pokémon Go incident. Currently, more and more organizations are seeking to reap its benefit through a meticulous strategy. E-commerce could be one of the major benefactors of AR as it will allow such organizations to turn the drawing room of consumers into trial rooms. Augmented Reality would enable e-commerce organizations to give its customers the feel of a physical store, thereby increasing loyalty and enhancing brand value. Even for brick and mortar stores, the underrated AR technology can create unique customer experience by coalescing digital and physical shopping.
All in all, the prospect of Augmented Reality is immense in equipping the technology world with unique functionalities. Although, to begin with, some skepticism is incumbent, however, with the rapid paradigm shifts in the tech ecosystem, AR is bound to make inroads into every possible industry.
