What is the Metaverse?
The Metaverse is the fusion of two realms – physical and virtual – that will become widespread in the next several years. This collision has created new possibilities, and one should expect to see more usage of this technology in the near future.
E-commerce and the Metaverse
The Metaverse will offer augmented reality for its users, and it will tap into the commerce industry for sure. The concept of buying and owning assets in a virtual world is not new, a lot of games allow users to own assets and purchase items from online stores, however, the only difference is that in the Metaverse users will have complete ownership over their assets through the concept of digital contracts on the blockchain.
Ever since the pandemic, there has been an increase in the usage of e-commerce in general; people are more comfortable shopping online.
When online shoppers nowadays shop they end up choosing from a list of products on a standard user interface, E-commerce in the Metaverse will allow shoppers to emerge themselves through an avatar of their choice into an online shop while they might be completely on the opposite side of the world.. Pretty great isn’t it? This may seem like a long catch for some people but the metaverse promises its users that it will offer this virtual experience very soon.
It is already happening!
Believe it or not, the metaverse is already offering a lot of opportunities for the e-commerce industry. Brands like Roblox and Second Life have a huge user base already.
Corporations have started to recognize the massive opportunities behind the Metaverse and are building out their capabilities in augmented and mixed reality. For instance, Nike, Gucci, Coca-Cola, and many more already partnered with Roblox for showcasing their virtual products; even some brands like Nike and Coca-Cola have released their own NFTs that aim to offer their NFT owners special events, products, and even discounts.
The E-Commerce industry is rapidly growing
Meta E-Commerce is actually one of the top industry trends that will most likely contribute to the increase of the overall market growth of E-commerce sales. Most companies are already completely digitizing their offline stores in order to keep up with the increasing online demand. In the future companies will likely join the Metaverse, it’s just a matter of time.
E-Commerce in the Metaverse won’t be facing any issues with regards to its potential demand, as the market opportunity moving forward is considered to be huge. The total global online retail sales will increase by 33% reaching $7.39 trillion by 2025. E-commerce in the Metaverse will definitely have its cut of market share and as Mark Zuckerburg predicted; “Within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers’’
Your Immersive E-Commerce Experience in the Metaverse
As a result of the growing anticipation of E-commerce in the future of Meta, there will be a need for the application of new technological advances; E-commerce companies will need to offer unique features that will provide highly tailored digital experiences to their customers.
As technology advances and its use increases, companies will usher in even more unique features in their business models that will combine offline and online purchasing. Metaverse technology enables organizations to provide a highly tailored digital experience to their customers.
The metaverse will be a unified experience that enables shoppers to locate precisely what they’re looking for, precisely when they’re looking for it. And, in contrast to the existing restrictions of your personalized digital purchasing experiences, the metaverse will enable marketers to expand the customization to reach a larger audience than ever before, but that is a conversation for later.
Shoppers are bound to have an immersive experience when their avatar enters a virtual shop that has real-world items that they can touch and pick up in the virtual world. This advances the current generation of self-service shops driven by computer vision and machine learning network technology to provide shoppers with an immersive virtual in-store experience.
The traditional shopping journey whether offline or online, can get a bit lengthy and could take time. The Metaverse on the contrary will offer a much more seamless and quicker experience when it comes to shopping online, whereby the virtual cart will act as one’s own checkout counter.
The Meta Commerce will also offer various ways of payments like paying using currency converted tokens, NFTs, or even cryptocurrencies. As the age of digital currency is rising heavily, Metaverse aims to align its models based on the digitalization of currencies around the world.
Challenges retailers will likely face in the Metaverse
The Metaverse will offer retailers a huge opportunity to expand their businesses, however, entering into a completely digitized ecosystem will pose some challenges for retailers.
Among the key practical challenges that a virtual reality-based shopping experience would confront is digitizing the tactile (texture) and aromatic components of products.
Submerging into the E-commerce of the Metaverse will require an entirely new level of security, one that is compatible with the Metaverse’s ever-expanding dimension. This would need the development of revolutionary data and privacy protection systems capable of securing an individual’s identity and assets in the virtual world.
So do you see yourself completely emerging into this new emerging technology in the E-commerce World? If you would like to know more about the Metaverse in general, check out our blog Metaverse: The New Era of Digital Reality
Loiy Saidi
Researcher