The retail industry is undergoing a major paradigm shift. Retailers are now looking at how they can leverage personalization to drive customer centricity in the metaverse era, as they are faced with mounting pressure to evolve and keep up with the ever-changing customer expectations.
Retailers have always been in the business of selling products and services, but today’s customers want more than that. They want a personalized experience that is tailored to their individual needs and wants.
In order to provide this type of experience, retailers must adopt new strategies that leverage not only personalization at scale but also the metaverse and AI technologies.
We have two points that are very important to leverage customer centricity:
-
Integrating the Data Layer with AI. With the data layer in place, retailers can use that to build personalized experiences for their customers. A retailer wanting to leverage personalization needs technology that is capable of understanding, interpreting, and creating individualized customer experiences.
The first step retailers must take is integrating their data layer with AI capabilities so they can better understand and interpret customers’ needs and wants as they progress through the information discovery journey in real time. This is even more necessary now that third-party data is a thing of the past and we only have mostly first-party data to go off of.
-
Operating on the Metaverse. Retailers should place themselves in a different world, where they are able to cater to each customer's individual needs and wants, regardless of location or time. This could mean designing a virtual retail environment or leveraging the immersive capabilities of VR and AR technologies.
To create personalization at scale, data is the key element and we are now facing a paradigm shift regarding data, as the metaverse is imminent and inevitable. In the current paradigm, people exist, and then companies go after their data.
However, in this new paradigm, data will come first, and people will exist only because of their data as an avatar in that metaverse. This will create infinite opportunities for brands to create custom experiences and environments around people's interests, needs, and preferences.
The impact will be anything from creating tailored experiences for every individual consumer in a company's database to understanding how our preferences move with context and changing circumstances.
We are already seeing this when we shop online. As an example, Nike knows that I am interested in sneaker styles because I've bought shoes from them before.
Nike also knows that when I'm shopping for designer shoes, my mood changes and there is a different list of things on my mind that can potentially impact my purchase intent.
There is also a lot of concern among marketers about the death of third-party data, but it must be remembered that as we live our lives in a fully-developed metaverse we will generate infinite amounts of data.
In addition to that, marketers can use AI-generated insights and automation to generate the most valuable experiences for their potential customers.
Key things to have in mind for retailers that want to leverage the full power of personalization at scale and the metaverse:
- Consumer Centricity: Focus on spaces where consumers engage - in-store, online, and even in the metaverse - and the experiences they want to have with brands. Consumers want and need to be emphasized. Consumers care about and expect brands to have a purpose. Have a measurable purpose plan in place that will deliver real-world impact.
- Be Digital-First: From smartphone penetration to online usage and e-commerce adoption, consumers across the globe are largely shifting to a digital, mobile-first lifestyle. Marketing with a digital-first approach will be crucial to staying connected to consumers.
- Gain Attention: In the age of distractions, active attention matters. Making an impact with your advertising and driving consumers to choose your brand over the competition requires a focus on attention as the new metric that matters. The Metaverse can be a huge opportunity, but also a huge challenge in terms of gaining the attention of the users.
- Target Gen Z: Gen Z will have unprecedented spending power and is more self-focused than previous generations. This can be a good thing because brands will be able to provide them with a personalized service, which strengthens their relationship. Brands are expected to engage with them about their interests and they are always connected, through their phones, to social interactions.
We can see that the state of personalization in this era is more than just targeted content. Personalization is about creating an environment that is tailored to each individual user’s needs and preferences, no matter how different they are from each other.
The next frontier for personalization is in VR and AR, and the next frontier of retail is consumer-first, the ability to create and interact with 3D worlds in ways that allow them to be tailored to each individual's unique desires.
This is the future of personalization: not just how companies conduct their advertising campaigns, but how they market themselves and where the brands live as well.