12,500 products are now available to view and purchase at the online marketplace’s Australian department store, Myer.
Australian consumers can now head to the Myer department store through eBay in order to be able to enjoy a virtual reality shopping experience that has been created by the massive online marketplace.
In order to be able to take part in this VR experience, shoppers will need to wear Shopticals.
The Shopticals are special virtual reality shopping goggles, which are essentially an altered version of the cardboard viewer from Google. Over 100 products are already viewable in 3D, but the VR technology will take things to an entirely different level. In order to make sure that Australians are properly equipped to go shopping within the virtual reality environment, eBay is giving away 1,000 of the Shopticals every day until 20,000 have been distributed.
Consumers can also request a pair of their own Shopticals virtual reality shopping goggles online.
All consumers need to do is visit ebay.com.au/vr and they can request a pair of their own Shopticals. A spokesperson from eBay has explained that there is already an “incredible” demand for the VR goggles and the company is going to be broadening the ways in which it distributes them soon. Myer is among the most recent retail additions to the Australian eBay sellers.
That retailer was selected by eBay for its very first VR shopping launch partner due to the broad spectrum of products that Myer has to offer, said a spokesperson from eBay. She explained that “We wanted to make sure that the first time people shop in VR they can see a wide selection of brands and categories, and a department store felt like the best way to showcase breadth and depth of selection.”
In order to use the Shopticals for virtual reality shopping on Myer at eBay Australia, the consumer needs the eBay VR app, which is already available at Android and iOS. Once the headset is on, the shopper can move through the digital department store and look around at the large selection of various products that are available there.
Notably, mobile commerce performed better than what comScore had predicted for the holiday season. Many consumers opted to shop for and purchase products that they were interested in with their smartphones and tablets. Retailers had prepared to engage mobile consumers throughout 2015 and found that their efforts had been successful. Due to the success of mobile commerce, retailers are likely to participate more in the mobile space in order to create a more dynamic connection with customers.