Student-Created VR Retail Experiences: Designing The Stores Of The Future

The development of the VR ecosystem presents an unprecedented opportunity for the future of retail. Cultivating the foundational knowledge and skills necessary for retail students to thrive in this environment is essential. This study explores the potential of one such intervention through a Virtual Reality Retailing course that integrates a student-created VR project, where students develop immersive grocery stores. The learning objectives of this project included designing functional grocery store layouts for the year 2033, incorporating thoughtful aesthetics and display mechanisms, and using the VR design tool SketchUp. Upon completing the project, an analysis was conducted to assess how successfully the students met these learning objectives. A survey questionnaire was also administered to 11 students to gather feedback on their project creation experience. Student response suggests that this project required them to think critically of merchandising strategies as designers of the spaces, provided relatable scales, realistic renderings, and indicated clear transferable skills to the professional workplace. However, students suggested that the limitations and learning curve of SketchUp and the Enscape plugin offered challenges, such as collaborative modeling. These challenges likely contributed to the lower rankings in their ability to meet the feasibility and functionality requirements of the designed store.