VRShop: A Mobile Interactive Virtual Reality Shopping Environment Combining the Benefits of On- and Offline Shopping
In this work, we explored the main characteristics of on- and offline shops with regard to customer shopping behavior and frequency. Thus, we designed and implemented an immersive virtual reality (VR) online shopping environment. We tried to maintain the benefits of online shops, like search functionality and availability, while simultaneously focusing on shopping experience and immersion. By touching the third dimension, VR provides a more advanced form of visualization, which can increase the customer’s satisfaction and thus shopping experience. We further introduced the Virtual Reality Shopping Experience (VRSE) model based on customer satisfaction, task performance and user preference. A case study of a first VR shop prototype was conducted and evaluated with respect to the VRSE model. The results showed that the usability and user experience of our system is above average overall. In summary, searching for a product in a WebVR online shop using speech input in combination with VR output proved to be the best regarding user performance (speed, error rate) and preference (usability, user experience, immersion, motion sickness).
