That definition of the metaverse as it relates to the use of the senses comes clearly into play when the retailing industry inhabits the metaverse. One of the biggest benefits for retailing is that the metaverse boosts engagement with customers. “Any time that you can have a consumer engage more and over a longer period of time with your brand, you’re going to build loyalty,” said Wharton marketing professor Barbara E. Kahn, whose specialties include variety seeking, brand loyalty, retail assortment issues and patient decision-making. An important metric in retailing is the time that people spend in engagement with brands. “More engagement with the brand has been shown to correlate with loyalty and subsequent conversion,” she explained. “The metaverse as a 24/7, immersive, experiential and social environment.” Those features enable the metaverse to serve as “a virtual platform where you can look around, visit stores, play games, or attend a concert, she added. Building Trust and Transparency The metaverse is linked with blockchain, which adds new layers of trust, transparency, security and traceability that facilitate commerce in the virtual world. For instance, blockchain enables payments in the metaverse for transactions involving virtual assets. “If someone creates something in the metaverse, say an artistic endeavor, and if it’s associated with blockchain, you can trace their history give them unique credit for their work, and they can earn revenues off the lifetime of the piece,” said Kahn, who was formerly director of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at Wharton. Those creations could be paid for through NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, which are digital assets stored on the blockchain, representing proof of ownership and authenticity; they cannot be edited, copied or duplicated.