# Recognition of Customers' Impulsivity from Behavioral Patterns in Virtual Reality
###### Abstract  
Virtual reality (VR) in teailing (V-commerce) has been proven to enhance the consumer experience. Thus, this technology is beneficial to study behavioral patterns by offering the opportunity to infer customers' personality traits based on their behavior. This study aims to recognize impulsivity using behavioral patterns. For this goal, 60 subjects performed three tasks--one exploration task and two planned tasks--in a virtual market. Four noninvasive signals (eye-tracking, navigation, posture, and interactions), which are available in commercial VR devices, were recorded, and a set of features were extracted and categorized into zonal, general, kinematic, temporal, and spatial types. They were input into a support vector machine classifier to recognize the impulsivity of the subjects based on the I-8 questionnaire, achieving an accuracy of 87%. The results suggest that, while the exploration task can reveal general impulsivity, other subscales such as perseverance and sensation-seeking are more related to planned tasks. The results also show that posture and interaction are the most informative signals. Our findings validate the recognition of customer impulsivity using sensors incorporated into commercial VR devices. Such information can provide a personalized shopping experience in future virtual shops. virtual reality; machine learning; signal processing; consumer behavior; V-commerce +
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environments to simulate physical shopping experiences using low immersive systems such as computer screens and traditional input devices, e.g., mouse and keyboard [8; 9]. In the 2010s, the number of studies using VR interfaces increased, but most of them still relied on medium- or low-immersion displays, such as fish tank interfaces or large stereoscopic systems [7]. For instance, the powerwall setup (a large screen with stereoscopic vision), as a low-immersive stereoscopic, was used to investigate consumer reactions to VR technologies [10]. Some studies also created a 3D web-based virtual supermarket using a low-immersive desktop to research consumer reactions to marketing strategies, including price and product labeling [11], emotional responses to retail ambiance [12], and reactions to empty shelf space [13]. In a more immersive approach, [PERSON] et al. [14] simulated a virtual supermarket using three 42-inch LCD screens that created a 180\({}^{\circ}\) field of view. They used a choice task to compare using VR versus photographs of products. In this study, participants could navigate using a keyboard and mouse. Another fully immersive system that has been used in VEM studies is the head-mounted display (HMD), which blocks stimuli from the external world. This brilliant feature, which can provide simulated immersive experiences with a high sense of presence similar to the real world, has made VR an attractive tool for scientific study [15]. The first use of HMD interfaces in VEM was in 1995, to undertake supermarket redesigns with reduced costs [7]. Recently, this technology has attracted researchers' attention. As an instance, [PERSON] et al. [16] compared subjects' gaze patterns by presenting a 360\({}^{\circ}\) video in an HMD and a 3D display. This relatively new technology has been used in several studies of consumer behavior [17; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23]; however, extensive research should still be performed to shed light on every aspect of consumer behavior in VEM. The popularity of VR has increased in recent years in academic and commercial frameworks [24]. Additionally, several efforts have been made to take advantage of VR technologies to replicate the significant achievements of using the internet in commerce [25]. VR technology is playing a prominent role in the contemporary business landscape [26]. Hence, physical as well as online retailers are progressively considering employing VR to endure in the current competitive market and grasp new opportunities [27].