NEWS

On March 10^th, the Great East Japan Earthquake Reconstruction Support Charity 2019 was held in Futako Tamagawa Rise Shopping Center. The charity event was held for the purpose of donating to the Michinoku Future Fund, a fund providing support for children whom lost their parents in the earthquake to continue their education, and Rakuten participated as a co-sponsor.

As a part of this event, the Rakuten Institute of Technology Future Merchant Design Laboratory presented a VR customer support system along with the Rakuten marketplace store OH!GLE at one of the booths. The system consisted of a virtual character that presented products to the visiting customers.

The system was developed with the aim of helping sales people provide support from any location at any time. By using VR, the sales person can serve customers, in the form of the virtual character, while looking at the product images and the landscape of the store within the virtual space. In addition, the customer side can consider their purchases while talking directly with the virtual character. In fact, our observations indicate that the added layer increases how freely and openly the customer and the sales person can communicate from the start.

For the event, we borrowed the character Tohoku Zunko, a character intended for Tohoku reconstruction support, to be our virtual character. This added an additional level of fun for the customers to interact with the popular character.

In addition to our booth, there were a lot of other shops, including sellers of local goods, workshops, and much more, all working together to make the event a great success. We would like to deeply thank the companies involved for their cooperation. In addition to OH!GLE and Tohoku Zunko, we will like to especially thank:

・ AnostVR
・ SSS Corporation
・ Crimson Technology Co., Ltd.
・ Aoji Production Co., Ltd.

For more information about OH!GLE and Tohoku Zunko, see the links below.

OH!GLE

Tohoku Zunko