We’ve already seen a few examples of brands dabbling in VR shopping, such as Vera Bradley, Alibaba, and even the mother-of-all online retailers, Amazon, but no physical retail companies the size of Walmart have stepped into the arena. However, according to a recent report from Bloomberg, that could all be about to change.
It appears that the retail giant has recently filed for patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that would entail a “virtual show room” and digital replica of a Walmart store, including a platform for shoppers to explore via the use of VR headsets.
The patents even cover things like grabbing items from virtual shelves into a digital shopping cart in front of them. And once you buy something in VR, you actually would have bought it in real life as it’s shipped to you automatically from a distribution center. Basically, it’s just like shopping online, but everything is represented in 3D space instead on a flat computer screen or mobile device.
“Walmart knows that its stores are too big and unwieldy for people,” Zoe Leavitt, a managing analyst at patent researcher CB Insights, told Bloomberg. Leavitt then goes on to say that so far the company has filed for more than a dozen VR-related patents over the years.
What do you think of this news? Is VR shopping you want to become a thing? Let us know down in the comments below!
