Designing and Testing a Virtual Reality Online Shopping Application

Abstract

E-commerce is the exchange of products and services over electronic platforms. Most transactions on the internet, from banking services to hotel reservations, can be considered as an e-commerce activity. Online Retail, E-Tailing or Online Shopping is a type of E-commerce in which the customers purchase finished products through websites and applications using devices such as computers, tablets or smartphones. With the improvement of the internet speed, the development of smart devices and these technologies becoming cheaper day by day; the online shopping method has been adopted by more and more customers over time. The number of online shopping sites, the number of businesses selling over the internet and the volume of online shopping are increasing every year. Also, it is predicted that these figures will continue to increase in the near future both globally and in Turkey. The COVID-19 pandemic has also been a catalyst for the growth and adoption of e-commerce and the online retail sector. In order to prevent the virus from spreading faster, governments have taken mass quarantine measures, imposed lockdowns and banned indoor public spaces temporarily but for a long time. During the lockdowns, people tended to shop online to meet their needs and online shopping methods have penetrated our daily lives more than ever. Even after the restrictions are removed, people are still hesitant to go to closed public spaces and physical stores because of contagion risk. E-commerce and online retail provide many advantages to customers. However, although the sector has been in our lives for a long time, it still has some unsolved problems. Since the sector already takes a big role in our lives and will continue to grow in the future, some steps should be taken to solve these problems. Thus, online customer satisfaction and service quality can be increased. According to customers, a very obvious problem in the sector is to buy products without seeing and experiencing them physically. While shopping online, customers examine products through photos. Photos do not allow customers to fully perceive the products or they may be misleading about a products texture, size or quality. The customers may encounter a product different from what they have expected after the delivery. Dealing with returns after such events reduces customer satisfaction and also causes a waste of logistics workforce. In order to overcome this negativity, some businesses considered using technologies that can offer a more realistic 3D experience instead of 2D interfaces such as websites and mobile applications, in the near future. Therefore, some companies and academic studies have produced prototype shopping systems using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies.