Although it accounts only for roughly 15 percent of global retail sales, e-commerce has, alongside the rapid technological advances we continue to witness, grown steadily over the years.

While the rest of the world reeled in the face of disruptions spawned by the corona virus pandemic, e-commerce, with its obvious and unique advantages, registered accelerated growth. The segment is estimated to have grown by 27.6 percent (for a total of $4.280 trillion) in 2020, while total worldwide retail sales declined by 3.0%, to $23.839 trillion.

But, despite the redeeming features and encouraging outlook, online shopping falls short of the brick-and-mortar alternative it seeks to replace in one crucial aspect: the experience of shopping

Safe, efficient, and convenient, e-commerce most definitely is, but shoppers, not entirely weaned away from the sensory delights of shopping in an offline environment find it difficult to fully adjust to the emotional void within which e-commerce takes place.

Innovative retailers, looking to fill that void by getting as close to simulating the physical experience as possible, have turned, for an answer, to the purveyors of all things virtual – the gaming industry.

Pangaia, a 21st-century apparel brand with well-defined precepts and goals, engaged the services of a digital retail studio, and London College of Fashion’s Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) to transform the nature of online shopping from desultorily navigating through static pages to an immersive journey through dynamic landscapes, filled with choices and surprises and rewards.

Tasked specifically with creating a narrative realm to launch its new FLWRDWN line — a collection of outerwear and accessories, made of bio-based down-fill material created using natural wildflowers and a biopolymer, designed to keep the body warm in the coldest environments – the FIA and the digital studio were required to effectively convey a highly technical and emotive message.

In response, they created a virtual Antarctic landscape where shoppers find themselves — upon emerging from a dome tent, to which all visitors to the site are taken. From where they stand, they see items of apparel seen, hovering above the ground, in the distance. On-screen prompts direct shoppers to ‘collect’ certain items as they freely wander through the ‘area’, encountering multiple forms of media – from educational animations to 3D products – along the way.

It is this element of unguided discovery and immersive involvement that differentiates the ‘sanitized’ experience of ‘traditional’ e-commerce from the form of experiential e-commerce that retailers like Pangaia, aided by their collaborators, have introduced.

Incorporating gaming psychology concepts, designers keep customers interested and engaged by creating purpose and incentivizing them. Users can explore, choose and discover at their own pace, adding the crucial taste of the expected to the flavour of online shopping

And that is only the beginning. Among the main benefits of building a retail platform within a game engine is the possibility of making online shopping a shared experience. Soon brand ambassadors in the form of sales assistants and influencers will also populate the landscape. Just as shoppers will enter the space in groups in real-time for friends to savour a shared experience. This will open the door for customers to create their avatars, which, in turn, will offer brands more opportunities to shape their digital presence.

In an age where retailers acknowledge and encourage the role of influencers in guiding consumer choices and building customer loyalty, many find serious merit in collaborating with influencers in creating virtual ‘spaces’, using gaming technology.

Flocking to these influencer sites, which are powered by the retailers, followers gain access to retailers’ offerings. With brands reducing high street branches and retailers rethinking the concept of the flagship store, ‘influencer havens’ such as these neatly channel the flow of customer traffic in the direction retailers require.

The music industry is another area where the tools and techniques of gaming offer a solution to current challenges. With the future of festivals and concerts in the post-pandemic world uncertain, the development of viable alternatives in the virtual realm is already well underway. 

Video game environments offer a revolutionary, if not an entirely new, platform for accessible performance. Performance in games and virtual spaces goes back over a decade and a half, when Second Life, an online world, was already hosting performances by leading groups and solo artists. In more recent times Minecraft has enjoyed tremendous popularity and success in hosting major events and could well provide the template for the music concerts of tomorrow.

Clearly, the use of gaming technology allows retailers to make the experience of online shopping more engaging, exciting and entertaining. But there are some aspects it cannot touch or change. 

The imagination may know no boundaries, but virtual reality does. No matter how realistic a simulation appears, it remains a simulation. Nor is the experience of touch, taste and smell ever likely to be faithfully replicated.

E-commerce, augmented by gaming technology and buffeted by the winds of technological and social change, will present itself in newer forms and continue to grow its market share. But the chances of it growing beyond, let alone eliminating, its traditional, physical alternative are, well, virtually non-existent.