Developing virtual assistant in a virtual retail store environment for product search effectiveness

V-commerce is a shopping concept that combines shopping experience and virtual reality technology which introduce a new way to shop in 4.0 era. This culture had been seen especially increasing ever since the COVID-19 emergence. However, both environments often seen to be experiencing navigational difficulties due to perceived environmental complexity. Eventually, it causes confusion either for customer during their shopping experience or for retail staff during their operational time. Using virtual assistants in order to increase product wayfinding capabilities is an approach that has been proven to be potential in improving the shopping experience to be more enjoyable and effective. This study aims to develop a virtual assistant within the scope of virtual retail store in terms of the effectiveness in finding product and also to choose type of virtual reality technology that are ideal to implement in Indonesia. Measurements were conducted using navigational performance metrics, several questionnaires related to satisfaction and presence, and Retrospective Think Aloud Method. This study showed that the use of semi-immersive virtual reality technology provides better performance for implementation also the results of virtual assistant development and evaluation have proven to be able to help product wayfinding by further implementing the suggested improvements.