The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using ...avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight to the potential socio-economic impact of a fully functional persistent cross platform metaverse. Separating the hype and “meta…” rebranding from current reality is difficult, as “big tech” paints a picture of the transformative nature of the metaverse and how it will positively impact people in their work, leisure, and social interaction. The potential impact on the way we conduct business, interact with brands and others, and develop shared experiences is likely to be transformational as the distinct lines between physical and digital are likely to be somewhat blurred from current perceptions. However, although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale - one that our avatars could transcend across platforms, researchers are increasingly examining the transformative impact of the metaverse. Impacted sectors include marketing, education, healthcare as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption, and issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and impact on vulnerable people. This study examines these topics in detail by combining the informed narrative and multi-perspective approach from experts with varied disciplinary backgrounds on many aspects of the metaverse and its transformational impact. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda that is valuable for researchers, professionals and policy makers alike.
•The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using extended, augmented, and virtual reality technologies.•Interactive virtual environments and immersive games are considered as antecedents of the metaverse.•The transformative impact of the metaverse as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption.•Sectors potentially impacted by the metaverse include marketing, education, tourism, and healthcare.
•The metaverse fundamentally changes the way consumers and firms interact.•A trace of the evolution of the metaverse concept suggests a shift from a narrow perspective (single virtual worlds) to a ...broad perspective (multiple hyperconnected virtual experiences).•A systematic review of 164 articles and a content analysis of metaverse viewpoints of 78 business professionals helps to identify emerging themes, propose an organizing framework and assess implications for marketing practice.•Firms can utilize immersiveness, sociability, and environmental fidelity to design and characterize consumer experiences in the metaverse.•The metaverse-induced changes have relevant implication for future marketing academic research in areas such as Intelligence, Innovation, Communication, Experience, Consumer Behavior, and Policy Formulation.
A hyper-connected digital universe referred to as the ‘metaverse’ bears the promise of fundamentally changing how consumers, brands, and firms will transact and interact in a seamlessly interconnected space of virtual realities. The potential of the metaverse is being accelerated by the increasing tendency of (i) consumers engaging and transacting in virtual spaces and (ii) firms investing millions of dollars in developing metaverse-related technologies. However, given the rapid evolution, there is a lack of clear understanding of the current scope of the metaverse and the consequent implications for marketing practice and research. This study integrates the findings from an extensive literature review of multiple disciplines and expert viewpoints of industry leaders to propose a definition and an organizing framework for the emergent metaverse. Subsequently, the authors discuss how metaverse-induced changes contribute to novel implications for marketing practice and propose a research agenda to guide future academic studies and marketing initiatives.
Our understandings of money, possessions, and ownership are all changing dramatically as consumption becomes digital and virtual. The Metaverse is an imagined future space where these building blocks ...of neoliberal production and consumption are delinked. We examine these changes through the affordances of cryptocurrencies, algorithmic collectibles, and NFTs. We seek to disambiguate these efforts at disintermediation through online auctions and speculation. We present practical implications for artists, art institutions, buyers, and investors. We theorize new forms of ownership with fractional ownership and fractionalized property rights. And we seek to understand why some consumers pay astronomical prices for digital art that includes simple and often silly artwork with limited property rights. To do so we distinguish alternate, but sometimes overlapping, buyer motivations in the wild world of crypto art as we purportedly move toward the Metaverse.
Extended Reality (XR) is gaining popularity in several application areas in recent decades. In this context, this paper aims to analyse how this technology can be applied in the field of sports ...through the scientific literature published so far.
Extended Reality (XR) is an important service in the 5G network and in future 6G networks. In contrast to traditional video on demand services, real-time XR video is transmitted frame-by-frame, ...requiring low latency and being highly sensitive to network fluctuations. In this paper, we model the quality of experience (QoE) for real-time XR video transmission on a frame-by-frame basis. Based on the proposed QoE model, we formulate an optimization problem that maximizes QoE with constraints on wireless resources and long-term energy consumption. We utilize Lyapunov optimization to transform the original problem into a single-frame optimization problem and then allocate wireless subchannels. We propose an adaptive XR video bitrate algorithm that employs a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) based Deep Q-Network (DQN) algorithm for video bitrate selection. Through numerical results, we show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the baseline algorithms, with the average QoE improvements of 0.04 to 0.46. Specifically, compared to baseline algorithms, the proposed algorithm reduces average video quality variations by 29% to 50% and improves the frame transmission success rate by 5% to 48%.
Metaverse, as an evolving paradigm of the next-generation Internet, aims to build a fully immersive, hyper spatiotemporal, and self-sustaining virtual shared space for humans to play, work, and ...socialize. Driven by recent advances in emerging technologies such as extended reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, metaverse is stepping from science fiction to an upcoming reality. However, severe privacy invasions and security breaches (inherited from underlying technologies or emerged in the new digital ecology) of metaverse can impede its wide deployment. At the same time, a series of fundamental challenges (e.g., scalability and interoperability) can arise in metaverse security provisioning owing to the intrinsic characteristics of metaverse, such as immersive realism, hyper spatiotemporality, sustainability, and heterogeneity. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the fundamentals, security, and privacy of metaverse. Specifically, we first investigate a novel distributed metaverse architecture and its key characteristics with ternary-world interactions. Then, we discuss the security and privacy threats, present the critical challenges of metaverse systems, and review the state-of-the-art countermeasures. Finally, we draw open research directions for building future metaverse systems.
The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse's impact on users and ...organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing‐focused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse. We identify new research directions and propose a new framework offering valuable contributions for academia, practice, and policy makers. Our future research agenda culminates in a checklist for researchers which clarifies how the metaverse can be beneficial to digital marketing and advertising, branding, services, value creation, and consumer wellbeing.
The declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic forced humanity to rethink how we teach and learn. The metaverse, a 3D digital space mixed with the real world and the virtual world, has been heralded as a ...trend of future education with great potential. However, as an emerging item, rarely did the existing study discuss the metaverse from the perspective of education. In this paper, we first introduce the visions of the metaverse, including its origin, definitions, and shared features. Then, the metaverse in education is clearly defined, and a detailed framework of the metaverse in education is proposed, along with in-depth discussions of its features. In addition, four potential applications of the metaverse in education are described with reasons and cases: blended learning, language learning, competence-based education, and inclusive education. Moreover, challenges of the metaverse for educational purposes are also presented. Finally, a range of research topics related to the metaverse in education is proposed for future studies. We hope that,
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this research paper, researchers with both computer science and educational technology backgrounds could have a clear vision of the metaverse in education and provide a stepping stone for future studies. We also expect more researchers interested in this topic can commence their studies inspired by this paper.
Unlike previous studies on the Metaverse based on Second Life, the current Metaverse is based on the social value of Generation Z that online and offline selves are not different. With the ...technological development of deep learning-based high-precision recognition models and natural generation models, Metaverse is being strengthened with various factors, from mobile-based always-on access to connectivity with reality using virtual currency. The integration of enhanced social activities and neural-net methods requires a new definition of Metaverse suitable for the present, different from the previous Metaverse. This paper divides the concepts and essential techniques necessary for realizing the Metaverse into three components (i.e., hardware, software, and contents) and three approaches (i.e., user interaction, implementation, and application) rather than marketing or hardware approach to conduct a comprehensive analysis. Furthermore, we describe essential methods based on three components and techniques to Metaverse's representative Ready Player One, Roblox, and Facebook research in the domain of films, games, and studies. Finally, we summarize the limitations and directions for implementing the immersive Metaverse as social influences, constraints, and open challenges.
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