Lotte showcases metaverse shopping pavilion at CES 2023

Sitting on a chair, people with head-mounted displays enter a virtual world where they can choose their preferred avatars.

Through these avatars, they can walk around a department store lobby, try on clothes, put on makeup, wear perfume, and purchase other goods in the virtual world.

That is what visitors experienced at the "Virtual Lotte Duty-Free Tower," a metaverse space introduced by Lotte at CES 2023, the world's largest consumer electronics and IT trade show, held between Jan. 5 and 8 in Las Vegas, US.

The virtual tower is a ten-story metaverse building, of which Lotte released only four floors so far: a lobby, a fitting room, a fashion section, and a cosmetics and perfumes floor.

Individual avatars could get information and test items from the luxury brands MCM, Akmedravi, Makeup Forever, and Roxitan.

Lotte, South Korea’s largest duty-free store operator, plans to complete the entire ten-floor structure of the virtual duty-free tower by the end of this year and then launch the metaverse platform.

To increase consumer accessibility, Lotte is also developing a PC-based platform to allow customers to enjoy virtual shopping without the head-mounted device.

Write to Mi-Kyeong Lee at capital2@hankyung.com