Exploring New Environments with Avatars The metaverse offers space for avatars; these are virtual characters that people can create to represent themselves. They can customize their avatars by skin type, gender, size or other features such as dress. People deploy them in virtual environments, where they can perform a variety of roles within the metaverse environment like explore a space, view a video, play a game; and the avatars can befriend others. “It becomes your second self,” Kahn noted. Avatars offer opportunities in retailing that were hitherto unimaginable. They can browse online stores, push different buttons to get deeper into a website, see product videos and even make purchases. Tapping the metaverse will of course call for bigger marketing budgets, and so the early birds may be brands and retailers with means and staying power. “You are seeing luxury [brands] put their toe in the water a lot, because what a luxury [brand] is building is a lifetime relationship with an elite group of customers,” said Kahn. A lot of these luxury brands are partly experiential, and the metaverse can help develop that relationship.” Building such a superstructure of consumer appeal in retail via the metaverse has its limitations, such as in the fragrance business. The metaverse does not lend itself to the sense of smell when buying a perfume, but it can conjure up the ambience. “You can have a video where you can do as much as you can to translate the scent into some kind of visual cue,” Kahn said. “If there are celebrity endorsements, you can engage with the lifestyle it’s associated with. You can do everything short of the smell to try to create what the fragrance stands for.”