Embodiment in 3D virtual retail environments: exploring perceptions of the virtual shopping experience

The customer can now easily create, and customize, their own personal three dimensional (3D) virtual bodies in a variety of virtual environments; could you, by becoming a virtual body, actually enhance your online shopping and buying experiences or, would this potentially inhibit the pure visceral pleasure of retail therapy? "Second Life allows you to be a celebrity in your own lunchtime, .…you can design the body you've always wanted, and indulge your fashionista fetish for very little money. You can be the most attractive, best-dressed version of yourself you can imagine." This paper investigates online shopping in Second Life, through the experience of being avatars. We will discuss the possibilities of using avatars as brand new consumer identities for personalised and customised fashion shopping within the 3D multi user virtual environment, and question the influences and effects of these developments on the traditional high street shopping trip. The hyper un-realistic and non-sensory interface of online shopping for clothes has been hotly debated over the last decade; through the media, the industry and most importantly by the buying public. The customer’s inability to try on and experience the product has been the main inhibitor to shopping on-line, and the high levels of product returns in home shopping dramatically reflect this reality. Faster broadband connections and improved 2D web sites are making clothes shopping on the web more accessible, and for important customer groups, such as young professional females, and plus-size teenagers, virtual 3D technologies offer freedom of choice in any location. Retailers are now confidently providing different shopping experiences by combining 2D and 3D interactive visualisation technologies with advanced marketing techniques, to create virtual retail environments that attempt to actualise the true essence of shopping; by browsing, socialising, trying-on before buying and, in a new twist, leaving the store proudly wearing the item just purchased. American Apparel, Bershka, L’Oreal, Calvin Klein, Reebok, Sears, Nike and Adidas are pioneering virtual mega stores, and all offer newly innovative, and alternative shopping experiences inside 3D multi user virtual environments. An experiential and exploratory approach will be used to investigate fashion brands, and their virtual 3D stores in Second Life. As 3D avatars, we will record a range of customer perceptions and attempt to map their shopping patterns in this massively popular virtual world. The qualitative data gathered will inform discussions about the value of the virtual shopping experience for the customer and the retailer. Conclusions will also question the possibility of using avatars in a virtual shopping environment to acquire accurate body specifications for better fit and the collection of personal details for use in the future development of alternative shopping experiences

Balancing the books: creating a model of responsible fashion business education

Abstract The fashion industry has well-documented challenges around sustainability; the predominance of the low-cost-high-turnover business model raises questions about fashion’s ethics (Shaw et al., 2004). Fashion’s engagement with sustainability is most visible in design and production areas and is much less well developed in the area of socially responsible management, although integrating ethical business and sustainability into graduates’ attributes is increasingly seen as a priority for educators (Sims, Brinkmann, Sims and Nelson, 2011). The 2007 United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education are an engagement framework for Higher Education Institutions to embed CSR in education, research, and campus practices (unprme.org). This Global Compact initiative developed in response to the global economic crisis, as a framework against which business schools can audit progress towards a societally responsible curriculum and practices. Purpose, the first of the six Principles, challenges educators to develop their students’ capabilities ‘to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society and to work for an inclusive and sustainable global economy’ (unprme.org). With our position as fashion business researchers and educators we have a responsibility to guide students as they develop their positions on the serious issues the fashion industry faces today. This paper explores a series of curriculum interventions at undergraduate and postgraduate level which introduce fashion business students to the complex practical and ethical challenges for 21st century fashion businesses, using the lens of sustainability to explore every aspect of the fashion industry: production, design and promotion. Through the authors’ research and teaching, case studies, lectures, seminars and assessment tasks have been designed to engage students with a 360 degree understanding of sustainability and to promote students’ development of creative solutions to our industry’s challenges. One such teaching initiative was a finalist in the 2015 Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) Green Gown Awards. It involved a series of guest lectures from sustainability champions after which students carried out sustainability audits on start-up fashion brands and proposed design and marketing strategies using sustainability as a key source of differentiation and added value (Aaker & McLoughlin, 2010). Learning about issues such as textile waste and opportunities e.g. co-creation and no-waste design, engagement was high and students responded positively: ‘The sustainability part of this project has changed the way in which I look at fashion due to my heightened awareness of the sustainable issues affecting fashion’ (student feedback). Another initiative based on the authors’ research into innovative business models, uses their case study on social enterprise as the basis for a Fashion Marketing Strategy unit which uses real fashion industry examples, including our own alumni, to encourage debate about fashion’s difficult questions- the balance between economic, social and environmental sustainability. In these and other innovative fashion business curriculum examples explored in this paper, our research and teaching aims to find and respond to an increased interest in concepts of shared value (Porter & Kramer, 2011) particularly evident in new generations of students (Jarvis, 2016)

Neural Insights into the Relation between Language and Communication

The human capacity to communicate has been hypothesized to be causally dependent upon language. Intuitively this seems plausible since most communication relies on language. Moreover, intention recognition abilities (as a necessary prerequisite for communication) and language development seem to co-develop. Here we review evidence from neuroimaging as well as from neuropsychology to evaluate the relationship between communicative and linguistic abilities. Our review indicates that communicative abilities are best considered as neurally distinct from language abilities. This conclusion is based upon evidence showing that humans rely on different cortical systems when designing a communicative message for someone else as compared to when performing core linguistic tasks, as well as upon observations of individuals with severe language loss after extensive lesions to the language system, who are still able to perform tasks involving intention understanding

A reassessment of the category management concept for strategic fashion merchandise planning

This conceptual conference paper proposes that the adoption of category roles is a useful concept when considering strategic aspects of fashion merchandise planning, but the development of category roles for fashion needs to use branding concepts in order to make them meaningful

Verbal ability in postmenopausal women in relation to age, cognitive and reproductive factors

Word-finding difficulties have been associated with age and, in women, lowered sex hormone levels following menopause. However, there is limited understanding of the ways that specific aspects of word-finding are shaped by women's age, reproductive histories, and background factors such as education. The current study investigated the effects of age, cognitive and reproductive factors on word-finding abilities in 53 healthy postmenopausal women aged 48-79. A questionnaire was used to gather demographic information and reproductive history. A battery of verbal fluency, continuous series, and naming tasks was designed to assess word-finding across different sensory modalities and cognitive demands. Category and letter fluency were quantified as total number of correct words produced on each task. For continuous series, switch rates and switch costs were computed. For the naming tasks, accuracy and latency measures were used. There were three key findings. Firstly, there was a consistent positive association between education and all word-finding measures, i.e., verbal fluency, continuous series, and naming. Secondly, age-related declines were seen on tasks heavily dependent on working memory such as the continuous series task. Thirdly, reproductive factors across the lifespan such as age at menarche and reproductive years showed subtle effects on naming abilities, but not on verbal fluency or continuous series. The results highlight that word-finding abilities in healthy postmenopausal women are shaped by factors associated with their early years (education, age at menarche) and later adult life (age, reproductive years). The study also distinguished between the more global effects of education, and the more task-specific associations with age and reproductive variables, on verbal task performance after menopause

Giving Voice to People With Dementia and Their Carers: The Impact of Communication Difficulties on Everyday Conversations

People living with dementia are an under-served group, whose voices are often excluded from research studies due to their speech, language and communication difficulties. As part of a larger study into language processing in dementia, we invited five people with dementia and their carers to tell us about how dementia impacts on their everyday conversations. We also wanted to gain insights into their views on communication strategies to circumvent these difficulties. Aware of the limitations of a standard focus group methodology for this population, we adapted this approach to provide people with dementia the opportunity to be active research participants. To amplify their voices and to enable carers to be as open as possible we ran the groups separately. Each was facilitated by a speech and language therapist. Both groups used communication accessible materials, to create an inclusive environment that valued contributions from all participants. The topic guide remained the same for all participants, ensuring equity in posing the same core questions. Focus groups were video recorded and transcribed. Reflexive thematic analysis was selected as the most appropriate method to ensure overarching themes identified were based in the data. In our analysis the main theme was sense-making; participants experienced and tried to make sense of dementia through the lens of interaction. Four subthemes were also identified, 1. It’s a journey, 2. You have to make the most of things, 3. Ask the right questions and it just flows-strategies in conversation, and 4. Dealing with people. Multimodal adaptations to a focus group methodology have given voice to people with dementia as well as their carers. They characterise dementia and identify useful strategies based on observations of what changes for them in everyday conversations