The impact of goods-classification and landmarks for spatial knowledge and goods-finding in the elderly within a 3D virtual store

Abstract

Online shopping has become quite popular since its first arrival on the internet. Although numerous studies have been performed to investigate various issues related to the internet store, some research issues relating to the spatial cognition of the elderly (the fastest growing internet group) when exploring a 3D virtual store still await further empirical investigation. The objective of this study was to examine how elderly users acquire spatial knowledge in an on-screen virtual store. Specifically, the impact of different types of landmarks on the acquisition of spatial knowledge was examined. In addition, in this study, goods-classification was seen as an implicit landmark associated with the acquisition of spatial knowledge. Therefore, it is worth observing the impact during the location of the goods and examining the combined effect with landmarks. The experimental results indicated that landmarks are important for the elderly as they attempt to locate goods within a 3D virtual store, no matter what types are used. However, landmarks are not the only resources for constructing spatial knowledge in a 3D virtual store; the classification of goods is also a good resource and may be more important than landmarks. In addition, the combined effect of goods-classification and landmarks in a 2D image would be best for the elderly in terms of acquired spatial cognition and the location of goods within a 3D virtual store.