From distance shopping to virtual shopping

The distance shopping system has a long history of development from the traditional mail-order catalogue to the interactive online shopping platform of today. However, developing a new form of distance shopping does not mean digitizing product catalogues or uploading product information online, retailers and marketers should pay attention to the effective use of virtual technologies, in particular to enhance consumers' experiences of telepresence and enjoyment. This paper discusses the use of virtual reality, in particular telepresense experience, for distance fashion shopping. A pilot virtual shop is introduced to describe the use of advanced virtual technologies in virtual shopping. 1 Introduction To understand and forecast the development of distance shopping in fashion retailing in the future, it is wise to look beyond the retailers' and marketers' perspectives , and put ourselves into the consumers' shoes. This is because fashion retailers and marketers always try to respond to customers' preferences and behaviours. Tracing the history back to the 1960s and 1970s, the notion of consumption has been redefined progressively from initially being practical and based only on the products' use value. Modern consumers no longer only consume the products or services; they also consume the products' meanings and images. When the aestheticism of everyday life penetrated into the field of consumption in the 1980s, scholars, researchers and marketers then began to see consumers as emotional human beings looking for sensorial experiences as they go shopping, where they interact with the products and services. In other words, consumers now shop for identities and not only necessities, and they focus not only on the product itself but also bring hedonistic values and individual subjec-tivity to the shopping experience. Fashion retailers and marketers have worked hard to product or co-produce pleasant shopping experiences for consumers in the new form of distance shopping in the virtual world, for example the experiences of telepresence and enjoyment. Distance or mobile shopping systems are a new trend that can potentially provide consumers with unique shopping experiences that can be highly personalized and autonomous, anytime and anywhere. However, with eCommerce transactions breaking their own records year after year, virtual stores for tangible goods like fashion apparel have always fallen short in the experiential factor, and this has been an important obstacle for managers in the fashion businesses. Aware of the problem, many online retailers