Exploration of Virtual Reality-Based Online Shopping Platform

The first online shopping transformed traditional shopping experience with the development of computer and network in 1984. In traditional shopping, people are able to physically interact with the products by multitude of senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch before making a purchase. In contrast, online shopping is totally different: people are restricted by the size of 2D screen and can only use the “browser to search keywords” or the “classification” to find the products of interest. Both shopping behaviors have their advantages to satisfy human beings. Therefore, the challenge of this research lies in how to create a more natural online shopping platform by incorporating online shopping and physical shopping? This research aims to use Virtual Reality (VR) device as an alternative bridge to break the boundaries between physical and virtual shopping stores. Our long term project is to create a “VR online shopping platform system”. While this research focuses on the preliminary stage to explore the simulation of VR online shopping platform, the future study will implement the system and apply it to Amazon and evaluate the possibility and feasibility.