Metaverse for service industries: Future applications, opportunities, challenges and research directions

Authors:
raw_author_name: Timothy Jung
raw_affiliation_string: Faculty of Business and Law, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK; School of Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea
raw_author_name: Justin Cho
raw_affiliation_string: Faculty of Business and Law, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
raw_author_name: Dai-In Danny Han
raw_affiliation_string: Food Evolution Research Laboratory, School of Tourism and Hospitality, College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg, South Africa; Research Centre Future of Food, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, Maastricht, Netherlands
raw_author_name: Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn
raw_affiliation_string: Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Department of Advertising & Public Relations, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
raw_author_name: Cindy Yoonjoung Heo
raw_affiliation_string: EHL Hospitality Business School, HES-SO/University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Lausanne, Switzerland
raw_author_name: Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro
raw_affiliation_string: Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal
raw_author_name: Marianna Sigala
raw_affiliation_string: Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Australia
raw_author_name: Mariapina Trunfio
raw_affiliation_string: Department of Management and Quantitative Studies, University of Naples Parthenope, Naples, Italy
raw_author_name: Alexandra Taylor
raw_affiliation_string: Faculty of Business and Law, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
raw_author_name: M. Claudia tom Dieck
raw_affiliation_string: Faculty of Business and Law, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

Abstract: Although the metaverse is still in the early stages of development and implementation, it has the potential to revolutionize the way how businesses can interact with customers through both the virtual and real world. In particular, service industries are already exploring the opportunity to utilize the metaverse to provide more immersive, interactive and engaging customer experiences. However, the holistic overview of the future applications, opportunities, and challenges of a metaverse in the context of service industries from academic and expert perspectives is limited. By employing a multi-perspective approach, this study looks into these unexplored aspects of the metaverse in the context of service industries through informed and multifaceted narratives by leading academics and experts from cross-disciplinary backgrounds from media and communication, education, hospitality, financial services, retail, tourism and healthcare. The main opportunities identified include the development of new experiences, the introduction of novel inter-world interactions, and new business-consumer relations within the metaverse. The key challenges covered include current technological boundaries, limitations of the experiences in the metaverse, health issues, and data privacy, security, and legal issues. The paper concludes with formulating future research agendas and presenting contributions to literature and implications for practice.