Amazon announced yesterday that it’s opening a hair salon in London—but it’s not exactly looking to get into the styling business. Instead, Amazon described the venture as a way to “showcase new products and technology.” The salon will use AR to show customers how their hair could look after using various products, which customers can then purchase via QR code. The experience is a blend of in-person and virtual shopping—a new muscle that Amazon is starting to flex as it ventures further into brick-and-mortar retail. With the salon in particular, it’s likely that Amazon’s real interest lies in gauging consumer interest in AR and experimenting with ways to integrate the technology into other parts of its business.
Consumer adoption of AR for shopping is still low, but it’s rising quickly, especially during the pandemic. With in-store visits heavily limited during lockdowns, adoption of the tech for shopping has more than doubled in the past year. Just 5% of US adults said they had used AR or virtual reality (VR) while shopping in a December 2019 wave of an eMarketer and Bizrate Insights survey. By the February 2021 wave, 11% said they had done so, and another 34% said that they were at least somewhat interested in trying it. Overall, we forecast there will be 93.3 million monthly AR users in the US this year, or 28.1% of the population.