How to plan & execute Retail & Commerce in the Metaverse

This PSFK Guide is a metaverse retail strategy report for pioneering companies to reimagine the retail, shopping, and product experience through the lens of seven trend-led commerce strategies.

Executive Summary

The idea of the metaverse has captured the attention of brands, retailers, media companies, marketing agencies, and technology platforms. Pioneering business leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs see new opportunities to stake their claim in an as yet-to-be-defined space that promises to revolutionize the internet and what it means to be online and completely change the way people work, play, learn, and shop.

Report Overview

In this metaverse retail strategy report, PSFK seeks to help frame how our community understands and thinks about an emerging space like virtual worlds by looking at the experimentation taking place, listening to expert POV, and tracking consumer sentiment to identify key insights and highlight emerging trends.

Specifically, we deep dive into the ways pioneering companies are reimagining the retail, shopping, and product experience. Through the lens of seven trend-led metaverse retail strategies, our researchers look at immersive commerce on platforms like Decentraland and Sandbox, IRL stores with embedded experiential layers, and the ways digital goods elevate the brand-customer relationship and beyond.

What You’ll Learn In This Report

• Why, as the lines that delineate on and offline behaviors and physical and digital worlds have nearly eroded, people slide into fluid, hybrid lifestyles with many ceasing to make distinctions between the two.
• How immersive worlds seamlessly combine elements of gaming, social media, entertainment, and retail, where users are embodied as avatars of their own design.
• How the metaverse can be reached by virtue of the ubiquity of always-on mobile devices and the ability to tap into digital content and experiences from anywhere at any moment.
• The roles of web3, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), cryptocurrency, and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) will be shaping how people experience the metaverse.

What’s In This Report?

This guide helps retail and CX executives exploring the metaverse opportunity with a deep dive into the ways pioneering companies are reimagining the retail, shopping, and product experience.

This metaverse retail strategy report provides:

• 7 retail strategies emerging in the Metaverse
• 24 best-in-class examples of how brands and retailers are activating in the Metaverse
• Proprietary statistics from PSFK US Metaverse Retail Experience Survey, 2022
• Consumer insights into changing behaviors and expectations around Metaverse commerce
• Case studies from Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Dapper Labs, Gucci, McDonald’s, MetaVRse and leading solution providers identified

Watch a Presentation of the Research + Expert Interviews

This video includes a presentation of key insights in this metaverse retail strategy report plus expert discussion with Liz Bacelar of Estée Lauder Companies and Alan Smithson of MetaVRse.

Original Insights & Statistics In This Report

• To date, most US consumers’ experience with virtual worlds has been through video games. 4x as many adult Americans have experienced virtual world spaces through games rather than through a purpose-built metaverse experience.
• Commerce isn’t a significant reason to attract users to the metaverse. When compared to a list of reasons that people visit virtual worlds, only 26% like to go shopping and only 15% want to run a business or do work. When visiting a business in a virtual world, only 40% go there to shop – and more would prefer to get special offers (51% of US adult virtual world users).
• Product trial and education present a significant opportunity to retailers and brands in the metaverse. 50% of US adult users who interact with businesses in a virtual world want to learn about services or try on products.
• 33% of all users like spending time in the metaverse updating the way their avatar looks (although this figure is less for ‘body-less’ VR users (29%) vs non-VR users (37%)).

Who Prepared This Report?

This metaverse retail strategy report was developed by the same PSFK research department that since 2004 has provided trends-led innovation consulting advice to Apple, BMW, Facebook/Meta, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Volkswagen