e-Try before you buy: the effectiveness of online sales tools

This article is published as part of the inaugural showcase of the Revue française de gestion, "Innovation et numérique: quelles implications managériales?" held on September 27, 2017 at the castel of Wiltz (Luxembourg).In partnership with Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, and The Conversation France, this event was organized to mark the graduation of DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) du Business Science Institute, whose juries included some thirty professors of management science, for 17 DBA thesis defenses by doctoral students-managers.

What if, while you waited for your bus or metro, a billboard offered you make-up products to match the outfit you were wearing? And what if you could buy these products in seconds from a vending machine on the platform? Such is the service offered by the "Intelligence Color Experience" proposed in 2013 in the New York subway. Do these virtual product testing techniques have a future, will they replace samples or are they just a flash in the pan?

What may still seem like a fiction to us is already part of business practice today. And yet, are we prepared to stop coming into physical contact with products we don't know before buying them?

Try before you buy?

The possibility of testing a product has long been identified as a means of reassuring customers about the quality or performance of what they are about to buy. As a result, manufacturers devote large sums of money to product testing for products whose consumption is a major commitment for consumers (expensive products or products consumed in a particular context or by an important person).

If this practice is natural in a market where you can easily taste the fruit and vegetables you covet, it is more complex in self-service distribution where products are protected by packaging.

In the cosmetics industry, for example, providing samples of creams, perfumes, lipsticks and eyeshadows is crucial to convincing future customers. It is also very costly for the sector, not to mention the environmental costs of such mass distribution practices of products packaged in very small containers...

At the outset of the development of Internet sales, experts predicted that they would only complement sales in "real" stores for new products, relying on the fact that consumers could not do without the advice of a "real" salesperson or direct contact with the product before buying it.

Yet today, online advice has become commonplace, and customers are browsing store shelves with a level of skill that is sometimes higher than that of the salesperson they are talking to... The only barrier to virtual purchasing would therefore remain the first physical contact with the product. Today's technologies make it possible to test products without actually coming into direct contact with them.

Virtual product testing

Customers often test products to find out how they "look on them", on the assumption that a product that seems visually to correspond to what is expected of it, may not be suitable when worn or when interacting with a given individual.

For example, how many pairs of shoes purchased on the Internet are eventually abandoned because they were not tried on before purchase? Only the commercial policy of free returns (for the customer) allows online shoe sales models to develop...

However, for other product categories, today's technology makes it possible to put the product in situ without having to come into physical contact with it. For example, the IKEA application kitchen planner allows the brand's kitchen furniture to be positioned in a room of the buyer's size and color, so that it can be viewed in context.

In the same way, L'Oréal's virtual mirror Makeup Genius makes it possible to visualize the brand's various make-up products in three dimensions on one's own portrait in an almost infinite number of ways. In all these cases, the challenge for companies entering into a logic of virtual testing of their products becomes to produce a solution as close as possible to the situation of real use.

The question of the similarity between virtual and real experience is therefore at the heart of the effectiveness of these practices.

From virtual to real and vice versa

If we consider that there is a "real" world on the one hand, and a "virtual" world on the other, it's clear that these two worlds regularly intersect. One example is the Pokémon Go craze, which sees players travel to real locations to capture creatures that are present virtually. Research shows, then, that our "real" world can be augmented by "virtual" elements, what we call "augmented reality".

Conversely, when real elements are added to the virtual sphere, as in the case of a virtual product test, we speak of "augmented virtuality". The hypothesis that virtual product testing is a way for people to get as close as possible to a real experience they could have with the product is therefore based on the idea that the real and virtual spheres should be similar.

Yet we don't necessarily have the same qualities online (for example, on the dating site Meetic or when playing The Sims) as we do in our real lives. Isn't it wrong to think that, as soon as we tackle a consumer problem, we'll be looking for a virtual experience similar to the one we could have with real contact with the product?

Is testing without touching still testing?

We conducted research comparing women in a traditional make-up product test situation with women who applied make-up using a virtual mirror, to see to what extent the test modality would influence their purchase intention.

We're back to the idea that the more similar participants found the test to be to the reality of product use, the more satisfied they were with the test: in this case, the real product test was the most effective. For example, the fact of not touching the product when it is to be worn on the skin remains one of the limitations of the virtual test, which loses realism.

On the other hand, there is a much greater direct effect, showing that the virtual test is preferred to the real one, irrespective of its realism. It would therefore be wrong to regard virtual product testing as a simple diagnostic tool for reducing the perceived risk when purchasing a product. It does indeed play this role, and in part helps to limit the use of real samples, but it is first and foremost the source of an experience different from that which users might have in the real world.

For example, it is possible to test 30 different shades of lipstick with a virtual mirror, whereas with real product samples, consumers will only try one or two, constrained by make-up removal... The playful and hedonic aspect of virtual product testing therefore seems to be a real strength for this practice, making it more effective than real sampling.

When entertaining is more important than informing

The results of our research show that virtual product testing is a real opportunity in certain sectors, as it helps to satisfy consumers. They also lead us to consider that virtual product testing is best thought of as an experience in its own right, different from those we would have in the real world.

It is above all satisfaction with the test experience that makes us want to buy the product, and not the idea we have of the realism of the test. So it's not enough to want to adopt the key success factors of traditional sampling in order to negotiate the transition to virtual product testing... Consequently, professionals embarking on virtual testing should reflect on the fact that, as in many fields, when it comes to virtual sampling, "distraction is better than realism". When will we see a Pokemongo make-up mirror?

This article is republished fromThe Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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