Fostering fashion retail experiences through virtual reality and voice assistants

This paper discusses the potential of using vocal commands in a virtual reality (VR) fashion store. In fact, online fashion shopping has bloomed in the last ten years, as technological developments are continuously fostering the evolution of fashion e-commerce and branding strategies. The advance in virtual reality devices, which are approaching the consumers' sphere, cannot but further support such trend.However, such commercial opportunity turns into the challenge of making VR-based shopping experiences enjoyable and easy-to-use to the whole class of users. To this aim, in this paper we resort to one of the most desirable ways a non-expert would use to interact with a new environment: voice. For this reason, the current study explores the benefits of speaking and verbally interacting with a VR assistant, which embodies a salesman at the service of customers. Motivated by an increasing acceptance of voice assistants, we designed and implemented an immersive VR experience where the Amazon Alexa virtual assistant is integrated and exploited, to build a proof of concept. To evaluate our proposal, we selected a specific group of fashion-experts, i.e. demanding and non tech-savvy, which tested our application and appraised the perceived comfort and appreciation of the virtual experience. The preliminary results suggest how working on the VR interface and interaction modalities could open the door to a new wave of fashion e-commerce platforms, supporting a widespread adoption of VR into everyday routines.