A review on potential technological advances for fashion retail

Abstract

This technical paper will assess new technological advances that could change the way we buy clothes, exploring existing solutions that are still commonly confused with each other: Smart fitting rooms (SFR), interactive mirrors (IM), Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR). The methodological approach based on an exploratory research will start with a literature review on SFR and IM, comparing the main differences between these two technologies and addressing their unsuccessful attempts in retail. Our research will also assess daily technologies, which could possibly improve the customer’s experience with online shopping, as well as customers with reduced mobility. With smart gadgets in every corner, consumers are more difficult to convince with innovative products. We will propose future possibilities for fashion retail, where results will be presented as a first approach, in hopes of creating innovative solutions for the future. Moreover, sustainable implications related with this approach will be addressed in our additional considerations. This technical study considers only two basic solutions that were eventually too complicated to fit into fashion retail, exploring additional solutions that could change these limitations. Although explored and researched in the last years, solutions like IM and SFR were once part of what was considered the future of fashion retail. However, poor business models and lack of technological advances at the time limited these solutions. New technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed-Reality (MR), combined with the latest smartphone evolution could relaunch solutions like these.