Jun 5, 2017|

JD.com Leads Way For AR/VR In E-Commerce

JD’s lead scientist for augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies at the company’s fast-growing Silicon Valley R&D Center said June 1 that the company’s drive to offer the best possible shopping experience for its more than 236 million active customers will include greater use of those advanced technologies.

The scientist, JD’s Hui Zhou, told attendees at Augmented World Expo 2017 (AWE), the industry’s premier gathering in Santa Clara, California, that his team is working to build an e-commerce platform that will offer an improved, immersive shopping experience for customers and will offer partners a new range of innovative marketing tools.  He also described how JD is leading in China by establishing the first e-commerce AR/VR industry alliance to develop common tools and standards. The alliance already includes more than 30 companies.

The scientist, JD's Hui Zhou, told attendees at Augmented World Expo 2017 (AWE)

He also said that JD’s VR Shopping Galaxy app and the company’s AR-enabled app called JD Dream already allow shoppers to step into a complete virtual reality shopping experience to browse and buy a limited range of products on JD.com, or to preview how a piece of furniture, for example, would look in their own homes.

Hui said he envisions a time when every one of JD’s listed products, which today include more than 200 million SKUs, could become part of a virtual- or augmented-reality gallery that would allow customers to have a more satisfying and interesting shopping experience.  The company is actively pursuing new and advanced 3D-modeling techniques that would help accomplish this monumental task and make the vision a 3D reality.

Applying advanced AR and VR, Hui said, can transform the shopping experience from today’s standard 2D “WYSIWYG” (what you see is what you get) transaction to something closer to a “WYEIWYG” (what you EXPERIENCE is what you get) — a fully immersive, 3D experience.

For more about the AR/VR industry alliance visit vr.jd.com.

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