E-commerce and the opportunities offered by the metaverse. The evolution of the customer experience

• In the EU by 2025 an increase in annual GDP of between EUR 259 and 489 billion is expected.
• The European market for the metaverse will surpass the Chinese market in 2030 with an annual growth rate of 36.5 per cent, projected $119.35 billion turnover. In first place is the United States.
•  Worldwide, revenues from the metaverse are expected to be USD 937 billion by 2030. Gaming and e-commerce the most profitable markets.
• By 2027, an average of around 3.7 hours per day will be spent in the metaverse, with Gen Z with 5 hours being the primary target audience.

Active and present users in the metaverse will exceed 700 million by 2030, generating expected revenues of $937 billion. The new, more immersive and personalised user experience offered by the metaverse is already leading to the emergence of new needs and markets, businesses and forms of e-commerce. By 2035, the economic impact of the metaverse on Italy’s GDP will be between EUR 28 and 52 billion per year: great opportunities for Italian companies, which must not be found unprepared.

This is what emerges from the report ‘E-commerce and the opportunities offered by the metaverse. The evolution of the costumer experience‘, edited by Francesco Amendola, Program Director of the Executive Master in Data Science, and Valerio Mancini, Director of the Rome Business School Research Centre.

Business opportunities

“The metaverse today is a fertile ground for exploration, capable of profound implications not only in the technological context, but especially in the business environment, it represents a real revolution for e-commerce,” says Francesco Amendola.

The metaverse aims to make time spent connected more meaningful and make the most of it, creating sensory interaction modes that are almost similar to those experienced in the real world, more immersive experiences. The market segments with the highest profitability related to the use of the metaverse are e-commerce with $201 billion in revenue expected by 2030, and gaming with $163 billion (Statista 2023).

McKinsey predicts that by 2027 an average of about 3.7 hours per day will be spent on the metaverse. This is also a huge growth market in Europe: the European market for the metaverse will overtake the Chinese market in 2030 with an annual growth rate of 36.5% and USD 119.35 billion in sales. In first place will remain the United States with 158.09 billion. Virtual worlds in which to live a parallel experience to real life will reach a Total Addressable Market of $1.91 trillion in 2030 in the most conservative scenario, with the possibility of increasing to $4.44 trillion, according to Statista.

The main innovations

Today, the metaverse invests mainly in Retail and Entertainment, and allows not only to attract new targets, but to increase the visibility of companies and products, as well as to provide new touchpoints and shopping opportunities. “Immersivity is the basis and strength of these virtual spaces,” explains Mancini. What changes is mainly the online user-experience, which does not replace the real one but adds to it.

• Retail. The real-life and e-commerce forms of shopping, although directed towards the same goal, involve two different experiences. In the physical shop form of shopping, it is possible to touch the product, try it on, and interact with the shop staff; in the second, this experience is mediated by drop-down menus and algorithms. Thanks to the metaverse, it will be possible, for example, to try on clothes and interact with the staff thanks to one’s avatar, or to own unique digital pieces. Brands such as Tiffany’s and Nike have realised this. The former has launched a line of jewellery in 2023 in collaboration with CryptoPunks: pendants in digital format made of 18-carat rose or yellow gold containing 30 precious stones or diamonds, in a limited edition of 250 pieces. All you need to buy it is a 24×24 pixel image worth 30 ETH, i.e. about $51,000. But it is Nike that leads the way in the industry, with $183.31 million in revenue from NFT alone in 2022. Collaborating with RTFKT, a trainer company for the Metaverse, it created a collection of 200,000 customisable digital shoes with different levels of rarity. Nike Dunk Genesis cost between $6,000 and $10,000 per pair. Prada, already starting 1 December 2022, with its #PradaTimeCapsule has kicked off its phygital launches: exclusive products marked with both a physical and virtual serial number. This is a custom-designed garment marked with an NFT, possession of which grants access to exclusive events such as live Prada Extends. Samsung 837X, Benetton Playchange and Gucci Vault Land are just some of the shops already in the metaverse that offer unique virtual shopping experiences.
• Entertainment. Meta-concerts, such as that of artist Travis Scott, held in 2022 on Fortnite and attended by more than 12 million paying fans; the meta-fitness offered by immersive online workout or sports applications that also allow the user to earn rewards in the form of cryptocurrencies or NFTs, according to the Move-to-Earn model; the meta-vacation proposed by Moxy Hotels (Marriot Group) where travellers can interact with mixed reality experiences in different areas of its properties. Looking at sport, the new frontier are NFT tokens capable of representing in image or video form an assist, a goal, an athletic gesture or the epic moment in the career of a sporting idol. The NBA is leading the way in this field with its NBA Top Shot platform: to celebrate the NBA 2023 season, it launched 25,000 NFT packs, allowing every card pack purchaser to receive an exclusive airdrop: the luckiest could get one of LeBron James’ record-breaking 99 Legendary Moments from his career. As of early 2023, since its inception in 2019, NBA Top Shot has totaled over $1.05 billion in sales.

Impact on companies and new professions

“The metaverse represents a new boundary beyond which business opportunities marry technologies,” explains Gennaro Calì of OpenMall, among the entrepreneurs interviewed as part of the research. “The area of greatest attention is related to virtual commerce and a new way of doing marketing and branding strategies: companies can create virtual stores and showrooms but also events, trade fairs to present products and services in a totally immersive environment to offer unique, engaging and customised experiences”.

In order to seize these opportunities, it will therefore be necessary for companies to equip themselves with new professional figures such as the virtual reality designer (who is in charge of creating immersive digital worlds through 3D tools such as augmented reality and holograms); the crypto artist (who creates digital works thanks to NFT technology); the virtual fashion expert (who designs and creates virtual clothing, accessories and for avatars in the metaverse). The opportunities that this new technology brings are not only limited to the employment context, but involve a little bit of all working sectors. According to data from the ITS Business Services Foundation (ITSSI, 2022), the metaverse could have a $180 billion to $270 billion impact on the academic virtual learning market, a $144 billion to $206 billion impact on the advertising market, and a $108 billion to $125 billion impact on the gaming market.

Virtual shopping and avatars

According to data compiled by Forbes (2022), customers are spending more and more time in virtual spaces than on traditional websites, resulting in an increase of up to 25 per cent in purchase rates and up to 20 per cent higher average order values. Not only that, the emergence of the metaverse has brought real opportunities for business expansion. In addition to the already existing B2B and B2C models, new models aimed at the avatar or metahuman such as B2A (Business-to-Avatar) and B2M (Business-to-Metahuman) are emerging to meet their needs and wants in the virtual world, such as the purchase of digital clothing and accessories, and the sale or rental of virtual land. Finally, it will involve more and more sectors: the market for homes in the metaverse, Virtual Real Estate, could touch over 3.5 billion in 2025, according to the research ‘La Casa nel Metaverso’ conducted by Scenari Immobiliari.

The evolution is continuous and the convergence between metaverse and e-commerce in full expansion. “Many points still remain open, from full technological maturity to a clear regulatory context, from the integration of the various virtual worlds to their interoperability, but the evolutionary path is clearly marked out, opening up new opportunities and business scenarios,” concludes Francesco Amendola.