Back in June Italian start-up inVRsion launched ShelfZone, a piece of virtual reality (VR) software designed to recreate stores for large-scale retailers and consumer goods companies that enables them to maximise space whilst developing new market and customer research activities by analysing behaviour patterns. Now the company has announced the integration of a new eye-tracking feature.

With eye-tracking in place ShelfZone Research, the version of the new simulator intended for market/consumer research, is capable of analyzing pupil movements in real-time projecting them with a unique tool on different elements of the simulated retail space including: shelves, signage, pop material, products, even when handling them.

Its been developed in partnership with eye-tracking specialist SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI), allowing ShelfZone to trace precisely what the user is looking at, analyzing retail projects whilst aggregating countless data sources in a short time. SMI is the company that’s recently demoed its technology alongside NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH 2016.

“Virtual reality is the only technology which is able to reproduce those feelings typical of a realistic contest in a digital “measurable” one. The mission of inVRsion is to stress as much as possible on the quality of simulation and on the characteristics of consumers’ behavior in virtual reality, by investing constantly in research” says Matteo Esposito, CEO of inVRsion “Soon, thanks to projects like Google Daydream, hundreds of millions of smartphones will be VR ready and for all of us it will be natural to attend stores, museums and other public spaces through virtual reality”.

ShelfZone Research is one part of a larger family of ShelfZone products. The others are ShelfZone Trade – designed for show rooming and retail spaces – and ShelfZone Commerce – designed for e-commerce in VR – offering  potential to support store’s design activities, space allocation, category management, branding, consumer/market research and VR-commerce.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Shelfzone, reporting back with any further announcements.

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