Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Embedded On-line Shopping System

Online shopping has changed customers' purchasing behaviors due to the rapid development of Internet technology. According to the investigation of National Development Council in Taiwan, the number of people using online shopping has increased. Recently, augmented reality has also been introduced to online shopping websites. In this study, a well-known Taiwanese online shopping website was selected to be the experimental platform with an embedded augmented reality function, which allows customers to try on the displayed headwear virtually. In order to evaluate the effectiveness, the same online shopping website without augmented reality function was also used. A total of 30 participants with 10 in each age group (i.e. 20-29, 30-39, 40-49) and with online shopping experience were recruited. At the beginning of the experiment, participants had to take practice session to acquire the augmented reality embedded system and the other one, and then four scenarios would be given randomly. Objective measurements, such as task completion time and mouse performances were recorded during the experiment. System Usability Scale (SUS) and User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) were used to collect subjective measurements after participants completed each scenario. The results showed that the participants preferred to use the augmented reality embedded system than the other approach. Also the augmented reality embedded system reduced mouse clicking times, mouse speed, and paging frequency, indicating that AR embedded system can help customers to increase the efficiency of making shopping decision. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.