AR shopping is shaping up to be the next structural shift in retail, and the adoption curve looks uncomfortably similar to the one early e-commerce rode two decades ago. When Amazon opened for business, the team famously sounded a bell every time somebody placed an order. A few years later, retailers that had waited out the early phase were struggling to catch up. Augmented reality is following the same trajectory, and the brands that are already investing are positioning themselves for a market that is moving faster than most boardrooms realise.
The comparison is not a marketing line. In an IBM report, analysts Armado Ortiz and Mark McGiffin wrote that augmented reality could be as disruptive for retail as web or mobile was, and that ignoring it is akin to ignoring the advent of online shopping. The data behind that claim is worth unpacking.
The adoption data behind AR shopping
By the end of 2020, there were already 3.4 billion smartphones with advanced capabilities for augmented reality. Almost a third of US consumers, 32 percent, used AR apps during that same year. In Europe, the market for AR and other forms of extended reality was forecast to grow by 37.5 percent annually between 2020 and 2027. The global market for products and services related to extended reality was projected to scale from just over 30 billion US dollars in 2021 to 296.9 billion dollars in 2024. Whichever number you trust, the direction is unambiguous: AR shopping is moving from novelty to normal at internet-era speed.
Consumer behaviour is tracking the infrastructure. More than 83 million consumers in the United States used AR every month in 2020. 61 percent of US consumers said they preferred retailers that offered AR experiences, and 66 percent of consumers in Japan expected offline stores to offer AR experiences as well. When two out of three shoppers in a major market expect a feature, it stops being optional.
From luxury boutiques to the mass market
Extended reality started at the margins, with gamers who used it for fun. Then came the early adopters: luxury brands and boutiques that used AR to wow their customers with a tactile digital layer. Today, AR shopping reaches a genuinely mass audience through household names. Home Depot uses AR to let customers see how appliances fit in their kitchens before buying. Target lets shoppers preview furniture in their living rooms. IKEA runs one of the most widely installed AR apps in retail, giving shoppers the ability to drop a photorealistic sofa into their own apartment using only a phone camera.
The parallel with Napster is useful. The music sharing platform that preceded streaming was not a business, it was a hobby. Ten years later, digital distribution had simply ended the traditional music business model. Extended reality is moving off the fringe in exactly the same way, which is why Ortiz and McGiffin wrote that early movers could upend existing channels, just as the digital age shattered music distribution.
3D models are the entry point for AR shopping
For smaller retailers, the idea of competing with Amazon or IKEA on AR can look daunting. It is not. The entry point is the same for everyone: a library of 3D product models. Every AR use case, from product visualisation to web-based try-on to virtual showrooms, starts with a 3D asset. Once a retailer owns that asset, it can be reused across every channel and every touchpoint.
The first use case is also the most immediately profitable. Replacing traditional product photography with CGI rendered from 3D models saves up to 50 percent of the time and cost compared to a studio shoot. That single substitution typically pays for the 3D production in the first campaign. Everything that follows — AR ads, web-based try-on, digital showrooms, even AR business meetings where participants appear as lifelike holograms — runs on the same assets.
What the executives are saying
Tim Cook of Apple has said he believes a significant portion of the population will have AR experiences every day. Facebook, now Meta, has published similar predictions in its own research on AR and VR adoption. Their investment behaviour tells the same story: the companies with the deepest visibility into consumer technology are committing billions to AR infrastructure because they see the curve before the rest of the market does.
Consumer willingness to pay follows the same pattern. Independent surveys have shown that 40 percent of shoppers are willing to pay more for a product they can customise in AR, and 71 percent say they shop more often when using AR. The behavioural lift is large enough that it shows up in conversion data across categories from furniture to cosmetics to sneakers.
Where AR shopping is heading next
The next layer above today's AR shopping experience is virtual try-on for categories that historically resisted online sales. Eyewear, cosmetics, sneakers, watches, and fine jewellery are all categories where the shopper used to need a physical store to make a confident purchase. AR has dissolved that requirement one category at a time. The brands that built their AR pipelines around a 3D asset library are now the ones rolling out try-on experiences across their full catalogue without rebuilding the production process from scratch.
Key takeaways for AR shopping in 2026
The question for retailers is no longer whether AR shopping will reach scale. It already has. The question is whether your brand will be on the inside of that curve or chasing it three years late. The practical steps are straightforward: build a library of 3D product models, start with the assets that already pay for themselves in marketing visuals, and layer AR experiences on top as the library grows. That is the same playbook IKEA used, and it is open to every brand that wants to use it.
Ortiz and McGiffin closed their IBM report with a line worth remembering. Extended reality is not a future state. It is happening now, and now is the time to put it to work. The retailers that acted on that advice in 2021 are the ones with the head start in 2026. The advice has not changed, and the cost of waiting another year has only gone up.
