Virtual Store Research - In Context Solutions

I'll start my blog with this disclaimer. I own a marketing research supplier company with a few partners. We specialize in virtual store research. So, I have a vested interest in this space. What I also have is an excellent understanding of virtual store simulations and how they can be utilized by retailers, manufacuters, marketing services companies, and research companies to better understand how and why people shop the way they do.

I started this company because of the experiences I had with other virtual store vendors. I was at General Mills in their consumer insights function, managing their in-store testing, and brought in virtual store testing as a method to reduce the cost and time of doing this kind of research. The other vendors of virtual store research fall into one of two camps. One set provides a rich 3D virtual store simulation that allows respondents to move through a virtual store and shop, but the interviews have to be done in person. This makes the research projects about twice as expensive as they would be if they could be done online. The other set of vendors can do the virtual store online, but their interfaces are 2D for the shopping and this can lead to some issues for studying many aspects of a store environment.

Our company, In Context Solutions, provides the rich 3D simulation, but can do it over the internet providing the best of both worlds. This allows us to gather data over the internet to make it more scalable and cost effective, but still provide the best possible simulation of a store. If you want more information about us, please see our website at www.incontextsolutions.net.

I plan to use this blog to share some of what I have learned about how to do virtual store research and what some of the issues might be. I welcome your input and comments and will be happy to respond to them.