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In recent years, there has been significant interest in adopting XR (extended reality) technologies such as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), particularly in retail. However, extending activities through reality-mediation is still mostly believed to offer an inferior experience due to their shortcomings in usability, wearability, graphical fidelity, etc. This study aims to address the research gap by experimentally examining the acceptance of metaverse shopping.

This study conducts a 2 (VR: with vs. without) × 2 (AR: with vs. without) between-subjects laboratory experiment involving 157 participants in simulated daily shopping environments. This study builds a physical brick-and-mortar store at the campus and stocked it with approximately 600 products with accompanying product information and pricing. The XR devices and a 3D laser scanner were used in constructing the three XR shopping conditions.

Results indicate that XR can offer an experience comparable to, or even surpassing, traditional shopping in terms of its instrumental and hedonic aspects, regardless of a slightly reduced perception of usability. AR negatively affected perceived ease of use, while VR significantly increased perceived enjoyment. It is surprising that the lower perceived ease of use appeared to be disconnected from the attitude toward metaverse shopping.

This study provides important experimental evidence on the acceptance of XR shopping, and the finding that low perceived ease of use may not always be detrimental adds to the theory of technology adoption as a whole. Additionally, it provides an important reference point for future randomized controlled studies exploring the effects of technology on adoption.

Construction cost management is one of the important processes that should be achieved effectively and accurately for successful project delivery. Modern-day construction cost management demands a high level of spatial skills. Augmented reality (AR) can potentially increase the stakeholders’ spatial skills as a supportive technology to traditional cost management tools and techniques. AR is a breakthrough technology that could considerably ease execution in various industries, but AR applicability in cost management has not been studied extensively. Thus, this study aims to explore the use of AR in construction cost management tools and techniques.

Data were collected using a qualitative approach consisting of two rounds of the Delphi technique. A total of 22 experts in the construction and information technology fields were interviewed using a purposive sampling technique. The manual content analysis helped analyse data.

The study identified AR features with the potential to increase the usage of cost management tools and techniques. AR can enable spatial skills (abilities, thinking and tasks) in most cost management tools and techniques. However, technical, cultural and technical and cultural barriers obstruct the use of AR in the construction industry.

The usage of AR in construction cost management tools and techniques has not been examined in detail until now. Thus, the study was developed to meet the industry needs and fill the literature gap to investigate the potential use of AR in construction cost management tools and techniques.

The attraction of online shopping has raised the demand for customized image searches, mainly in the fashion industry. Daily updates in this industry increase the size of the clothing database at a rapid rate. Hence, it is crucial to design an efficient and fast image retrieval system owing to the short-listing of images depending upon various parameters such as color, pattern, material used, style, etc.

This manuscript introduces an improved algorithm for the retrieval of images. The inherited quality of images is first enhanced through intensity modification and morphological operations achieved with the help of a light adjustment algorithm, followed by the speeded up robust feature (SURF) extraction and convolutional neural networks (CNN).

The results are validated under three performance parameters (precision, recall and accuracy) on a DeepFashion dataset. The proposed approach helps to extract the most relevant images from a larger dataset based on scores conferred by multiple cloth features to meet the demands of real-world applications. The efficiency of the proposed work is deduced from its effectiveness in comparison to existing works, as measured by performance parameters including precision, recall and F1 score. Further, it is also evaluated against other recent techniques on the basis of performance metrics.

The presented work is particularly advantageous in the fashion industry for creating precise categorization and retrieving visually appealing photographs from a diverse library based on different designs, patterns and fashion trends. The proposed approach is quite better than the other existing ML/DL-based approaches for image retrieval and classification. This further reflects a significant improvement in customized image retrieval in the field of the fashion industry.