State-of-the-Art Visual Merchandising Using a Fashionable Social Robot: RoMa

AbstractSocial Robots have the potential to attract people and this capability can be used to develop robots that can come into the retail market and enhance visual merchandising. This paper investigates important criteria to use in the design of a robot that can be utilized to promote customer appeal in the fashion industry. RoMa is a novel robotic mannequin that has been developed with the consideration of professional showcase characteristics and a primary feature of interaction with people. Since real and perceptive human–robot interaction relies on the social robot’s sensitivity to its environmental information, RoMa is able to localize the people around itself. An empirical test was conducted to demonstrate the robot’s acceptability and performance. In this test the robot was outfitted and placed in a showcase at an apparel store where prospective customer behavior was studied via a camera, microphone and questionnaire. The results indicate that RoMa was able to increase the number of people who looked at the showcase by 280% during the day, which validates the idea of visual merchandising and sales enhancement. In addition, with its design and adequate affinity RoMa was able to attract customer attention from the viewpoints of anthropology, movements, and likeability.

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