•A new definition of Augmented Reality Marketing.•Augmented Reality Marketing is strategic and interdisciplinary, and not limited to promotional activities or consumers as target audiences.•BICK FOUR ...framework delineates four groups of AR Marketing objectives: Branding, Inspiring, Convincing and Keeping.•A survey among 127 managers provides insights into current practices and challenges.•Discussion of contemporary definitions of AR, VR (Virtual Reality), and XR.•Introduction of fundamental premises to further the AR Marketing discipline.
Augmented Reality (AR) has received increased attention over the last years, both from managers and scholars alike. Various studies in the marketing discipline have tackled fragmented aspects of AR, such as its impact on sales or brands. Yet, a holistic approach to AR remains scarce. Therefore, the authors define “Augmented Reality Marketing” as a novel, strategic, and potentially disruptive subdiscipline in marketing. In conjunction, they discuss a nuanced customer journey model for AR Marketing strategy and propose the BICK FOUR framework (branding, inspiring, convincing, and keeping) as a tool to organize corresponding goals. Another contribution is the introduction of several fundamental differences between AR Marketing and traditional digital marketing concepts, such as redefining the reality concept (reduced reality, normal reality, and augmented reality in a metaverse context). Insights from 127 managers further enhance the current and future practices of AR Marketing. Finally, a discussion of ethical and legal considerations completes the assessment.
Metaverse has revolutionized the retail landscape and related customer experience. Yet, research in this area remains limited. This study unveils metaverse retailing aspects and their impact on ...customer experience by linking extracted twenty latent topics grouped under four themes, namely, immersive technology adoption, controlled interaction, agency interface integration, and novel metaverse environment with the Uses and Gratification Theory 2.0 (UGT 2.0) elements - modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability. The paper discusses metaverse retailing and customer experience research that can advance consumer research and help companies identify metaverse retailing customer experience improvement areas. The paper concludes with possible directions that can be undertaken in future research related to the four themes identified in the context of customer experience in metaverse retailing. The authors also propose three probable future research models that are well grounded in theory and arise from our analysis of work undertaken in the area of customer experience in metaverse retailing.
This commentary questions two common assumptions underlying discussions of how digital technology can enrich the consumer experience. First, broad conceptualizations tend to accommodate augmented ...reality and virtual reality under a single metaverse umbrella. This commentary draws attention to differences between the two and to the present‐day prevalence of augmented reality experiences. Second, discussions of the metaverse tend to focus on visual experiences. This commentary draws attention to the impact that augmented reality is having through other senses. I argue that augmented reality experiences are ubiquitous because smartphones and wearables enrich our everyday life with haptic and sonic information.
Metaverse is a 3D virtual world where users can communicate with each other through avatars. This digital world affects many aspects of the real world and involves many sciences with many challenges. ...In this regard, legal science also faces many legal issues despite the existence of the metaverse. Regardless of the various legal challenges related to the Metaverse, One of the critical issues is how to protect children's rights in the metaverse adequately. Although this virtual world brings many advantages for children, including the fact that it can be used as an educational platform and interactive environment, it quickly exposes children to various training and skills. However, this technology also creates many disadvantages and risks that make it necessary to pay special attention to children. These include children in this environment being more exposed to cyber harassment or inappropriate content. Despite the necessity of such protection, this research has studied the legal challenges related to the metaverse, especially the impact of this environment on children, with a descriptive and analytical approach. The result of what was investigated became a basis for achieving the research goal, i.e., how to protect children in the metaverse effectively. According to the conclusion of this research, adhering to general legal frameworks and paying attention to specific laws and regulations, benefiting from artificial intelligence and blockchain technology and defining and using special tools can be efficient for the comprehensive Protection of children in the metaverse
The rapid evolution of the metaverse has led to the emergence of numerous metaverse technologies and productions. From a computer systems perspective, the metaverse system is a complex, large-scale ...system that integrates various state-of-the-art technologies, including AI, blockchain, big data, and AR/VR. It also includes multiple platforms, such as IoTs, edges, data centers, and diverse devices, including CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and 3D glasses. Integrating these technologies and components to build a holistic system poses a significant challenge for system designers. The first step towards building the metaverse is to instantiate and evaluate the challenges and provide a comprehensive benchmark suite. However, to the best of our knowledge, no existing benchmark defines the metaverse challenges and evaluates state-of-the-art solutions from a holistic perspective. In this paper, we instantiate metaverse challenges from a system perspective and propose MetaverseBench, a holistic and comprehensive metaverse benchmark suite. Our preliminary experiments indicate that the existing system performance needs to catch up to the requirements of the metaverse by two orders of magnitude on average.
•In this study, firstly, we propose a comprehensive conceptual system of the metaverse from the perspective of computer systems.•Secondly, we present a methodology based on the conceptual system for benchmarking the metaverse system.•Finally, we introduce an implementation of a benchmark suite based on this methodology, named MetaverseBench.
The allure of escaping reality and immersing oneself in the metaverse is increasingly captivating consumers, marking a trend that is poised to endure. Despite the metaverse's potential as a retailing ...powerhouse, its empirical conceptualization, interpretation, and portrayal of impacts on consumers remain in a nascent stage within current literature. This article charts unexplored research paths, providing invaluable guidance to marketers and researchers navigating the metaverse as a virtual retailing realm.
The traditional tourism industry is facing severe challenges and it urgently needs digital technology to improve the quality of service experience and storage security. Blockchain, as an emerging ...technology, brings new opportunities to the tourism industry as it provides a trusted platform for travel companies and tourists. This paper aims to address the challenges and for a real-world prototype development, it has proposed Gemiverse, a blockchain-based professional certification and travel platform that offers specialized solutions to meet challenges and focuses on building immersive experiences. Finally, three development stages of Gemiverse and conduct scene application tests is proposed.
The online learning process during the recent Covid-19 pandemic gave us an input about the significance of technological requirements for improving learning experiences in long-distance education. ...Scanning textbook pages, typing course materials, playing videos of scientific experiments, asking students to record a vide while doing homework, discussions in the chat-box, and even using an interactive whiteboard in virtual classrooms are all examples of technologies used, but they are not unavailable or inaccessible cutting-edge technologies any more. Increasing students’ performance and satisfaction requires adoption and adaptation to other technologies. Therefore some schools and universities in Iran have been equipped with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software. Metaverse labs in some schools s well as universities have been launched; although its effectiveness is questionable. But the main question is if the metaverse is accessible to learning outside of academia, why do we need universities anymore? Is expansion of the metaverse synonymous with the reduction of the university? May universities use the metaverse in learning activities, but keeping their function to formal higher education? Will universities be transferred to (and transformed in) the metaverse? Will organizational structure (and social role) of universities change in the metaverse? Answering such questions wants us to reconsider the linguistic construct and the social relation of university, technology, and society - which needs returning to the conceptions and conceptualization of the university, turning points of great expectations for/from the university, and megatrends of socio-digital transformations. In this paper, we reviewed John Henry Newman’s idea of a university in its historical context, the discursive turn of higher education (HE) from university to Clark Kerr’s multiversity, and the resurgence of the idea of the metaverse (i.e. a single, universal, and immersive virtual world) as a consequence of pervasive prevalence of alternative technologies. Attempts are to re-articulate those concepts, draw a big picture of their social relations (in what Karl Popper called world 3), and provide an epistemological criticism of current debates on consistencies and controversies of university and the metaverse.
The Scientific and Technical Revolution 5.0 and WEB 3.0 technologies create conditions for the renovation of various forms of social relations with the use of virtual and augmented reality ...technologies in the metaverse. According to the proposed theory, the legal regulation of social relations in the metaverse requires the development of a comprehensive electronic jurisdiction based on the latest basic legislation. The formation of legal regulation of the metaverse is a prerequisite for the need to form an electronic jurisdiction of the metaverse, which will include sectoral Metaverse Codes. The metaverse, as the electronic society of the future, does not yet have clear legal boundaries, and the task of scholars is to predict and outline with sufficient certainty the future contours of legal authority for virtual environments. Today, discussions in the scientific community about the feasibility and necessity of legal regulation of the metaverse often revolve around several key issues. First, there is the question of what legal framework should be applied in the metaverse and how conflicts between different legal systems should be resolved. Second, there is a debate about whether current regulatory bodies in the physical world have the capacity to effectively regulate the metaverse through existing laws and regulations. Third, there is the question of how to deal with offences committed in the virtual environment, and whether they should be dealt with under existing tort or criminal law, or whether a separate cross-border electronic jurisdiction should be created. The regulation of social relations in the metaverse should focus on one central goal: to clearly define the status of electronic entities, subjects and objects, to establish their rights, duties and responsibilities, and to define the different types of relations between virtual entities, subjects and objects within a given metaverse, as well as between different metaverses within an electronic jurisdiction and in a cross-border context. An essential component of the Metaverse Electronic Jurisdiction is a Metaverse Model Criminal Code that will outline the norms and offences applicable to analogue, hybrid and electronic jurisdictions. This code will define the types of socially harmful acts or crimes and the corresponding criminal penalties that will be applied within the metaverse. The formation of the electronic jurisdiction of the metaverse and the development of a Metaverse Model Criminal Code is a current scientific and legal issue.
