As the biggest E-commerce company of China, Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma, has already begun to use VR to bloom its business. Last year, Buy+ appeared on the Singles’ day shopping festival, November 11, the biggest shopping festival of China. During the period of this festival, Alibaba announced that VR shopping is no longer science fiction. In a news report about VR shopping, the authors Brennan and Wang (2016, para. 3) point out that ‘According to Goldman Sachs, the global VR and AR market will reach $110 billion by 2020’. There is no doubt that VR is reforming our shopping.
So, how is the feeling of shopping in the 3D world?
First of all, VR shopping provides an experience for people that is similar to that of real shopping, compared to E-commerce (Hwong et al. 2017). Personally, I’ve been spending a lot of time on online shopping because this is really timesaving. However, nothing is perfect. Online shopping has two significant drawbacks. On the one hand, if I’m going to buy a pair of shoes or a dress, I only can depend on imagination to think the picture that I put them on. On the other hand, it’s complicated for me to return or exchange the merchandise which I’ve received by post. But, with the VR technology, I could see the picture that I put on the dress, and I also can return or change any goods during the period of shopping.
Secondly, VR shopping allows people to learn more information about each one product. As the video mentions, when people use VR to shop, the system will play a role as a seller. It is going to show all details about every product and give suggestion to people and record the data of shopping. Therefore, people no longer spend time on reading instructions or asking sellers. Shopping will be more effective.
Thirdly, VR shopping provides a chance that we could shop in an overseas store. I think that this is the biggest advantage of VR shopping. Usually, if we want to buy some things from an overseas store which haven’t opened the channel of commerce with our country, we only can take an aeroplane, flying to there. However, with the VR, we could buy the goods from an overseas store through the Internet.
I am expecting the development of VR shopping.
References list:
Halzack, S 2015, ‘Shopping in 3d’, Winnipeg Free Press, 16 May, D.4, viewed 10 May 2017, ProQuest database.
Meng, J 2016, ‘Shopping in virtual reality’, China Daily, 18 November, p.12, viewed 10 May 2017, ProQuest database.
Segura, A, Goenetxea, J, Moreno, A, Arambarri, J 2012, ‘Virtual Reality Interfaces Applied to Web-Based 3D E-Commerce’, ResearchGate.
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