Virtual Bazar-An Interactive Virtual Reality Store to Support Healthier Food Choices

Virtual Reality (VR) has been incorporated in almost every possible application domain, but majority of the online shopping platforms are providing their customers only simple two-dimensional image-based and text-based interfaces to shop upon. This kind of monotonous shopping environment not only makes consumers lose their interest in shopping but also restricts personalized services to consumers such as providing healthier alternatives to the products or providing with suggestions based on their past shopping pattern [1]. Keeping these issues in mind the prototype of a VR based game “Virtual Bazar” is proposed which allows its users to shop in a Virtual Reality supermarket environment. The proposed model keeps a check on the Calorie requirements set by the user, shows Nutritional Information of products and create awareness for Healthier Products. It consists of two runs, in the first run users add items to their cart based on their desires with no warnings and nutritional values being shown. In the second run users are shown Nutritional information regarding products along with warnings on products having high Sugar or Carbohydrate values and with these suggestions the user again adds items to the cart. Based on the items of the two shopping lists, separate scores are calculated and analyzed. 50 different people within the age bracket of 20–35 years have played this game and ANNOVA Test has been performed on the scores obtained by these players. The results suggest that the players were benefited by the game as they learnt to choose healthier products.