British supermarket chain Tesco is looking into ways the company can use the Oculus Rift can alter the behavior of its consumers, as shown in the above pitch video demonstrating users wandering a virtual reality version of a Tesco location.
The project is called "Tesco Pele," a researching opportunity for the company designed to study how to alter consumer behavior. The demo above shows customers donning the Rift and wandering through a Tesco store, "shopping" around and exploring.
This virtual reality project was unveiled earlier this year in the U.K. as a way to help the company strategize store and shelf layouts as well as improve marketing and advertising for the Tesco brand. The program taps into shelf planning software and could allow Tesco to save money and time in planning store layout. The program could eventually be used to replace physical shopping altogether, instead providing a virtual space in which customers can shop for items.
"Virtual merchandising allows us to pack virtual shelves with virtual products at the press of a button," Group CIO at Tesco Mike McNamara noted in a press statement. "Because we no longer have to go through the laborious process of laying out new merchandise assortments physically, we can now try out infinitely more range and format combinations. For our customers this means we can tailor our store ranges to local needs at the same time as maintaining good planogram management so necessary for efficient operations."
Check out the video above for a virtual tour of Tesco to see the project in action.
Just yesterday, Facebook announced that it had purchased Oculus Rift in a $2 billion deal.
