There’s no shortage of talk about tthe ROI on immersive learning, but the real question is ‘when does the maths actually starts working?’ Recent case studies from Kellanova and Somero offer a clearer answer than most of the hype does.
ROI on immersive learning appears when the current way of training people is expensive, messy, risky, hard to scale, or inconsistent enough that a better approach starts saving real money or preventing real problems. PwC’s long-cited study on VR training economics found VR reached cost parity with classroom learning at 375 learners, hit cost parity with e-learning at 1,950 learners, and became 52% more cost-effective than classroom learning at 3,000 learners.
That’s the useful lens for buyers. The question isn’t whether immersive learning is exciting, because plenty of things are exciting right up until finance asks what they’re for. A better question is whether VR can replace a training setup that is already costing the business more than it should, whether in travel, facilities, trainer time, downtime, mistakes, or sheer operational faff. That’s where VR training ROI starts to become believable.
When Does VR Training Start to Deliver ROI?
A decent rule of thumb is that VR training starts to deliver ROI when you’re training a lot of people, repeating the same scenarios regularly, or dealing with tasks that are expensive or risky to recreate in the real world.
That’s why the strongest cases tend to show up in environments like retail field training, heavy equipment operation, healthcare simulation, and frontline onboarding across multiple sites. If the old setup is already clunky or costly, VR has something real to work with.
PwC’s scale thresholds don’t give you a universal answer, but they do reinforce the basic point that reusable immersive training gets more financially persuasive when it can be deployed repeatedly and at scale.
Kellanova’s VR Training ROI Came From Replacing an Expensive Physical Setup
Kellanova is one of the better examples because the original problem was easy to understand and the old solution was obviously expensive. In ArborXR’s June 2025 case study and companion podcast, Kellanova described replacing an in-person grocery store training centre with a VR experience for retail sales onboarding
What makes the example useful is that the outcome is more specific than a vague claim about engagement.
The podcast says the immersive version led to a 90% increase in display execution, which in this context means new hires were getting better at securing and placing extra promotional product displays in-store, not just stocking shelves correctly.
As Tomissa Smittendorf, Senior Director of Commercial Capability at Kellanova, put it:
“We’ve taken about 100 new hires through this process and have seen a 90% increase in display execution.”
She then explains that this meant reps were able to “upsell 90% more displays in the virtual store environment.”
That matters because it’s exactly the sort of scenario where ROI on immersive learning starts to appear. Kellanova wasn’t trying to make training futuristic for the sake of it, it was trying to stop relying on a physical setup that was costly to maintain and hard to scale.
There’s a practical lesson in that. If your current training method depends on physical environments, travel, trainer availability, or repeated in-person setup, the bar for VR training ROI comes down quite quickly. Suddenly the headset isn’t the expensive bit, because the expensive bit is the old training model you’re still dragging around behind you.
Somero’s VR Training ROI Came From Reducing Risk, Downtime, and Instructor Bottlenecks
Somero is a different but equally useful example because the economics are less about replacing a physical facility and more about reducing the cost and risk of learning on real machinery. Arbor describes using VR to train operators on laser-guided screed machines that can weigh up to 20,000 pounds. The programme is enhancing safety, saving costs, and boosting trainee confidence before operators ever touch real concrete.
This is where ROI on immersive learning stops being about direct cost-cutting alone and starts becoming about risk, downtime, and scarcity.
Somero’s Dave Raasakka says VR gives Somero “safety without penalty,” because trainees can make mistakes, learn from them, and repeat high-risk tasks without damaging equipment or putting anyone in danger. He also explains that expert trainers are hard to acquire and harder still to scale across a niche market, which makes immersive training more attractive because it helps preserve and distribute expertise more efficiently.
That’s a very different route into VR training ROI, but it’s a valid one. If the alternative is tying up heavy machinery, relying on scarce instructors, or letting people learn through expensive trial and error, the business case starts to look a lot more grounded. Nobody needs to pretend that concrete screed training is glamorous, but that’s kind of the point. The best ROI stories usually come from the least glamorous places, because those are the ones where the old training method is already a pain.
What These Case Studies Tell Buyers About ROI on Immersive Learning
Put the Kellanova and Somero examples together and a clearer pattern emerges. VR training ROI looks strongest when the training need is repeated, the real-world environment is costly or risky to reproduce, and the business can tie the improvement back to something it already cares about, such as faster onboarding, fewer mistakes, lower training overhead, better readiness, or less downtime. Kellanova shows what happens when you replace an expensive physical setup with something more scalable, while Somero shows what happens when immersive training reduces risk and makes scarce expertise go further.
That also means buyers should be wary of vague VR training claims. If the use case is infrequent, low-risk, easy to teach, and already cheap to run, the ROI story may not be there, no matter how nice the demo looks.
Nobody needs to turn every basic learning module into a headset experience just because someone in the room says “engagement” with a straight face. The better opportunities are usually the ones where training is already expensive, already awkward, or already inconsistent enough to justify doing it differently.
