Field Research To Discover and Analyze User and Customer Adoption Drivers For Augmented Reality Solutions

Our client, a global diversified electronics company, reached out for assistance with conducting  a market and technology opportunity analysis and assessment focused on adoption drivers for augmented and mixed reality devices and solutions targeted at enterprise applications.

Our client recognized that augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) solutions were experiencing a great deal of hype in the market and wanted to investigate adoption timing for these technologies.  A large number of companies had launched AR/MR development programs with many of them still in the process of identifying which applications and use cases they should focus on. Our client, who was also investing aggressively in MR/VR, has reached the conclusion that virtually none of these pilot programs had moved to full deployment.

As a hardware manufacturer, our client would only realize attractive returns from high volumes of devices utilized in full scale deployments across multiple domains and markets. In our early discussions with the client, they emphasized their goal was to better understand user and customer product specification requirements as well as buying and adoption behaviors.

The client’s team pushed to move quickly forward to dig deeper into the AR/MR arena to understand if the technology was mature enough and, if so, why customers were not moving forward and funding full scale use of the technology.

We organized the following steps to address this work:

1. Segment the augmented and mixed reality market and relevant ecosystems to identify the key players and participants in this arena.
2. Interview and survey users. customers and potential partners to validate pain points, needs, technical requirements and buying behaviors.
3. Facilitate follow on workshops with market constituents and users to further understand adoption drivers and criteria for utilizing these technologies.
4. Using the analysis we gathered through primary research with pilot-stakeholders, we then conducted an industry screening exercise to determine the most attractive applications within the enterprise market overall.

We interviewed and audited 400+ pilot programs across a range of enterprise applications as well as similar adjacent segments and applications to gain a rigorous and balanced perspective on buying behaviors, decision making drivers and feedback on technology challenges customers were facing.

Our analysis of the specification of AR/MR systems and related control points in the value chain established an effective context for our client to understand early technology adoption drivers, behaviors and timing with confidence.

The end-result of the engagement was a rigorous analysis of customer buying behaviors, industry adoption drivers, as well as AR/MR system requirements and capabilities.  The analysis and perspective established as a result of this project provided the basis for our client’s adjustment of their investment levels based on adoption timing as well as re-setting segment and application focus priorities and the complete re-design of their go-to-market strategy for AR/MR systems and devices.