D.P. Goyal

The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight to the potential socio-economic impact of a fully functional persistent cross platform metaverse. Separating the hype and “meta…” rebranding from current reality is difficult, as “big tech” paints a picture of the transformative nature of the metaverse and how it will positively impact people in their work, leisure, and social interaction. The potential impact on the way we conduct business, interact with brands and others, and develop shared experiences is likely to be transformational as the distinct lines between physical and digital are likely to be somewhat blurred from current perceptions. However, although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale - one that our avatars could transcend across platforms, researchers are increasingly examining the transformative impact of the metaverse. Impacted sectors include marketing, education, healthcare as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption, and issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and impact on vulnerable people. This study examines these topics in detail by combining the informed narrative and multi-perspective approach from experts with varied disciplinary backgrounds on many aspects of the metaverse and its transformational impact. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda that is valuable for researchers, professionals and policy makers alike.

The idea of the Metaverse as a virtual reality space where people can interact with computer-generated surroundings and each other in real time is gaining attention as this technology is roaring. Consumer electronics (CE) technology plays a crucial role in developing and using the metaverse. It offers the metaverse various devices like virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphones, and haptic feedback devices. These devices give users immersive experiences, improve communication and collaboration, and explore virtual worlds. In this paper, we review several applications of consumer electronics technology in the metaverse, two case studies of consumer electronics in the metaverse, several challenges in the existing CE technology in adapting it to the metaverse, and some future directions for research. As a part of case studies, we analyze how CE technology impacts education and healthcare in the metaverse. In metaverse education and healthcare, CE provides opportunities for immersive learning experiences, virtual simulations, remote training, and improved patient care. Numerous challenges CE faces in the context of metaverse related to structure development, standardization efforts, privacy concerns, and ensuring security that must be addressed for its successful implementation have been identified. Despite its limitations, ongoing efforts are being made to enhance these devices and optimize the overall experience for the metaverse.

Pre-dominance of competition and technology has introduced the new dimension of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The companies are compiling databases on individual customers and data-mining algorithms are applied on this data to get better insight of customers. Most of the times the customer data is not collected for the purpose of data mining and organisational databases are pervaded with the poor quality of data, which may lead to the failure of the whole CRM initiative taken by the organisation. This paper explores the relationship between data quality and data mining for successful CRM implementations.