Tech Transformation Podcast: Forrester Shares the (Real) Future of the Metaverse for Retail

In this episode of Tech Transformation, we’re talking about the metaverse and what it might actually mean for retailers and consumer goods. We’re talking with Mike Proulx, VP Research Director at Forrester Research, about their new State of the Metaverse Report. 

We dig into: 

• Myths and realities of the metaverse
• Why this isn’t just for gamers 
• How retailers need to prepare
• What brands risk by experimenting (or not)  
• What hiring for the metaverse looks like right now
• What this has to do with Web3  
• When this all might start to feel a little more “real” 

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Excerpts

“While virtual reality will be an important part of the metaverse ... VR is just one entry point. Other entry points are things like augmented reality, really any extended reality experience. We also believe that the metaverse is bi-directional — that over time while you will be able to enter the immersive spaces, so will the metaverse be able to enter your physical spaces through things like holographic projections.”

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“For those that say, ‘The metaverse is going to fail, because who's going to want to wear a VR headset for hours at a time?’ Well, one, it's not just VR, but, two, and more importantly, technology is going to continue to advance and evolve so that we're not going to be in a state — in time — where we're going to have clunky headsets. They will become much more accessible and much less intrusive to our faces.”

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“If we were to project out the shopping experience into the future, as the metaverse becomes actualized, one could imagine a much more personalized and truly seamless type of shopping experience that — again, we're in danger of taking how we shop today and applying those concepts into the metaverse — but you can bet that the way we do shopping in the physical world, or even just you know, regular e-commerce, is going to be different in a metaverse. But transaction and sort of an economy will be important to the eventual metaverse.

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“The risk is low [in experimenting]. Right now, in the context of the metaverse … as long as brands temper their expectations and temper their investments, and are going in with truly an experimentation mindset, then they really don't have a ton of risk.”

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