Retail customer expectations are rising, increasing pressure to innovate in-store experience. Immersive assistants, such as hologram assistant, remain underexplored, and organisations lack evidence of their impact, creating a risk of high novelty but low brand or service fit. At the same time, retailers must ensure that new technologies align with existing service practices, making it essential for decision-makers to understand the conditions under which such innovations create value.

A mixed-method case study was conducted, combining primary and secondary research and benchmarking. It included an online customer survey, an on-site customer survey, and semi-structured interviews with employees. In addition, an expert interview with the technology provider was conducted to gain deeper insights into the hologram shopping assistant and its implementation. The study concluded with a discussion of the findings and the development of strategic recommendations for potential implementation.

The hologram shopping assistant shows the highest value when positioned as a clearly defined ‘first-help’ touchpoint that reduces friction in the customer journey while reinforcing personal service and trust. Customers mainly value practical benefits, ease of use, and accessibility, followed by usefulness and time savings. After real interaction, most respondents reported a positive experience, but perceived value concentrated on simple tasks such as orientation, directions, and basic product information (availability, price, materials). However, novelty alone does not drive repeated use. Sustained acceptance depends on clear entry prompts and reliably correct, actionable answers. Trust is the central success condition as it increases with accuracy and consistency but drops quickly with incorrect responses or language-handling issues. Employees confirm this ‘potential but conditional’ pattern and stress role clarity and operational feasibility. Therefore, successful implementation depends on system reliability, stable multilingual performance, clear interaction prompts, suitable placement in high-traffic areas, and smooth handover to staff for more complex requests.