Augmented reality in retail asks a shopper to open the phone camera and point it at a room or a face. Most shoppers never do. In a 2026 survey for EMARKETER, the most common answer about AR shopping was that people had never used it and were not interested, and only 4.5 percent of shoppers used these tools regularly. For most shops, the size question has to be answered inside the product page, without a camera.
A note on where we stand: we build EasySizes, a size comparison that shows a product’s size without a camera, so we have a commercial reason to argue this side. Every number below links to its source, and where augmented reality works well, we say so.
What is augmented reality in retail?
Augmented reality in retail is software that uses the phone camera to draw a computer-made copy of a product on top of what the camera sees: a sofa in your living room, glasses on your face, lipstick on your lips. The camera is the defining part. A 360 degree product spin, a zoom tool or a size comparison inside the page uses no camera, so it is a different feature.
Shops use two names for the same idea. “AR shopping” or “augmented reality shopping” usually means placing furniture and objects in a room. “Virtual try on” usually means glasses, makeup or jewellery on a face or a hand. Both ask the shopper for the camera.
How many shoppers use AR shopping?
Few. In the most recent survey of United States shoppers, from February 2026, only 4.5 percent used augmented reality shopping tools regularly, and the largest single group had never used them and did not want to. A 2025 study found two thirds of US adults outside AR shopping apps altogether.
| Finding | Source and date |
|---|---|
| 66% of US adults are unaware of, have not used, or are not interested in AR shopping apps | EMARKETER and CivicScience, study published in 2025 |
| 85% of US mobile AR users reach AR through social platforms | EMARKETER forecast, May 2024 |
| 38.3% of US digital shoppers have never used virtual or augmented reality to shop and are not interested in trying | Bizrate Insights for EMARKETER, survey from February 2026 |
| 4.5% of US digital shoppers use these tools regularly | Bizrate Insights for EMARKETER, February 2026 |
The 85 percent figure deserves a second look. It means most people who have used augmented reality used it in a social app, where the camera is already open and pointed at a face. Some of that is shopping, such as a sunglasses brand paying for a filter. But it happens inside apps the shop does not own. On the shop’s own product page the camera is off, and the shopper starts from nothing.
Why shoppers skip the AR shopping experience
Shoppers skip it because it asks for effort at the moment they want one fact. Picture someone on a couch at night, scrolling a leather shoulder bag with one hand, three other shops open in other tabs. The question in their head is simple: is this bag bigger than my laptop?
To answer that with augmented reality, the shopper has to:
- Find and tap the “view in your space” button.
- Wait for the phone’s camera view to open.
- Get up, or at least find a clear, well-lit surface.
- Move the phone slowly until the software finds the floor or the table.
- Hold the phone steady while the 3D bag appears, then walk around it.
Every step loses some shoppers, and none of the steps answers the laptop question directly. A bag floating on a carpet still has to be compared with a laptop in the shopper’s head. EMARKETER’s own advice to retailers was to benchmark any AR pilot against the 4.5 percent who use these tools regularly, not against vendor demo reels.
Where augmented reality in retail works well
Augmented reality works best for expensive products where a wrong guess is costly and hard to imagine, sold by brands that can teach customers the feature. Furniture in a room, glasses on a face and makeup on skin are the strongest cases, and the best known examples live inside the retailer’s own app.
- IKEA. IKEA Kreativ, launched in the IKEA app in June 2022, uses AI to remove the furniture already in a room and replace it with new decor, as reported by Retail Dive.
- Warby Parker. Warby Parker added virtual try on to its iPhone app in February 2019, using the iPhone’s Face ID and TrueDepth camera to show frames on the shopper’s face, according to Retail Dive.
- Sephora. Sephora Virtual Artist, inside the Sephora app, lets shoppers try lip colours and false lashes on their own face, as Retail Dive reported.
The best independent evidence comes from a study in the Journal of Marketing by Yong-Chin Tan, Sandeep Chandukala and Srinivas Reddy, published in 2022. Using sales data from a cosmetics retailer’s app, they found that AR use was linked to higher sales, but that the overall effect was small. It was larger for less popular brands, for more expensive products and for customers new to the category. Their conclusion: AR helps most when uncertainty about the product is high.
Those cases share three things most shops lack: their own app with camera permission already granted, one kind of product whose 3D models can be built once and reused, and a marketing budget to teach customers the feature exists. A Shopify shop with a few hundred mixed products usually has none of the three.
Shopify does make AR possible without an app of your own. Since December 2021, Shopify product pages can show 3D models that shoppers can view in AR on iPhone and Android. The catch is that every product needs its own 3D model, and the shopper still has to open the camera. Free tools such as size.link skip the model and show a box of the product’s dimensions in AR through the browser, which still needs the camera and a supported phone.
Does augmented reality increase conversion? The 94 percent figure
The figure most often quoted is that 3D and AR raise conversion by 94 percent. Its traceable origin is one line in a Shopify changelog post from May 2022: merchants who add 3D content to their stores see a 94 percent conversion lift on average. The post gives no method, sample or time period.
Three things are worth knowing before you repeat it:
- It measures merchants who added 3D content, not shoppers who used AR. Shops that invest in 3D models may also have better photos, better pages and bigger budgets.
- The post does not say what the lift is measured against, so “94 percent more than what?” has no answer.
- BigCommerce, which sells ecommerce software and has every reason to like the number, wrote in a July 2026 guide that figures like it trace back to older or vendor-funded studies and are hard to verify against a current primary source.
If a vendor quotes 94 percent, ask for the study, the year and the share of the vendor’s own merchants’ visitors who opened the AR view last month.
Augmented reality versus a size comparison in the page
The difference is who does the work. With augmented reality, the shopper does the measuring with a camera. With an in-page size comparison, the shop does the work once, and the shopper sees the product next to a familiar object without leaving the page.
| Camera augmented reality | Size comparison inside the product page | |
|---|---|---|
| What the shopper does | Taps, opens the camera, finds a surface, holds the phone steady | Looks, or taps once to switch the comparison object |
| Works on a couch, in bed, on a train | Rarely | Yes |
| Shows the product next to a laptop | No, the shopper compares in their head | Yes, when a laptop is a comparison object |
| What the shop needs | A 3D model of every product | Product photos and dimensions |
| Strongest for | Furniture in a room, glasses and makeup on a face | Bags, small goods, anything sized against everyday objects |
What shoppers do when a product page shows no size comparison
They build the comparison themselves, from objects whose size they already know. Shoppers have done this for years without a camera or an app, and their own words show it.
An Amazon reviewer explained on Reddit that they add a photo next to another object whenever size is hard to judge: “I’m awful at visualizing size, so I always appreciate a banana for scale!” A doll collector’s forum poster asking for photos of a doll’s glasses wanted a quarter or a ruler in the frame and rejected the banana, because no two bananas are the same size. And one commenter told a new renter to buy masking tape, outline the furniture on the floor and live with it for a few days before deciding.
None of them reached for augmented reality. Each reached for a fixed object with a known size: a coin, a ruler, a laptop, a strip of tape on the floor. Shops that sell bags hear the same question every week: will my laptop fit? The words shoppers type are in handbags that can fit a laptop.
Put the size answer inside the product page
The answer has to arrive where the shopper already is: on the product page, next to the photos, with no camera and no second page. That means the shop does the hard part once (cutting out the product, reading its dimensions, scaling it against known objects) so the shopper does nothing. For what a size surprise costs a shop, see how to reduce returns in ecommerce.
The idea is not new. Tangiblee, which sells size comparison to retailers of bags, jewellery and watches, describes its Compare Mode as a true-to-scale, side-by-side view that does not require 3D scans, 3D models or 360 degree spins. Tangiblee reports that shoppers who use Compare Mode are 1.5 times more likely to convert, a figure from its own March 2026 post that gives no method. If you are weighing a Tangiblee alternative, we compare prices and features.
What used to make this expensive was the setup: someone had to cut every product out of its photo and size it by hand. Software that reads images and product descriptions now does that work, so any shop can switch it on for the whole catalogue in an afternoon instead of commissioning a project.
Try a size comparison without a camera
Below is a live size comparison, running on this page: a leather shoulder bag 39 by 48 centimetres, about 15 by 19 inches, next to everyday objects at the same scale. Nothing to install, and no camera.
The MacBook Air is about 30 by 21.5 centimetres, so the bag is wider and much taller. The couch shopper sees that in one look, while still lying down.
EasySizes adds this size comparison to product pages for physical products.
Augmented reality shopping questions
What is an AR shopping experience?
An AR shopping experience uses the phone camera to place a 3D copy of a product in the shopper’s own space or on their face before they buy. Common examples are furniture placed in a room, glasses tried on a face and makeup tried on skin. It needs a camera, a supported phone and a 3D model of the product.
How many people use augmented reality shopping?
Few use it regularly. In a February 2026 survey by Bizrate Insights for EMARKETER, 4.5 percent of US digital shoppers used virtual or augmented reality shopping tools regularly, and 38.3 percent had never used them and were not interested.
Does augmented reality increase sales?
Sometimes, by a small amount. A 2022 Journal of Marketing study of a cosmetics retailer’s app found AR use linked to higher sales, with a small overall effect that was larger for expensive, less popular products and for customers new to the category. The widely quoted 94 percent lift comes from a 2022 Shopify post with no published method.
Is virtual try on the same as augmented reality?
Virtual try on is one kind of augmented reality. It uses the front camera to show a product such as glasses, makeup or jewellery on the shopper’s face or hand. AR for furniture uses the back camera to place a product in a room. Both need the camera and a supported phone.
Can a Shopify store add augmented reality?
Yes. Shopify product pages can show 3D models that shoppers view in AR on iPhone and Android,. Each product needs its own 3D model, uploaded as product media, and the shopper still has to open the camera to see it in their space.