BT-REQ-1940 Consumer Holiday Guide 2023 v9 BH - Flipbook - Page 20
Getting ready for a fully
immersive lifestyle experience
Anthonia Ghalamkarizadeh
Eugene Low
Partner
Hamburg
Partner
Hong Kong
Carrie Yuen
Paralegal
Hong Kong
As I sift through the clutter in my daughters’ shelves, I 昀椀nd myself
thinking with excitement about the day when their Christmas wish-list
will feature a new pet for their avatar.
While we are buying our loved ones gifts
in the cute little bookstore on the corner,
browsing on Amazon or potato-stamping
kitchen towels with our kids for the
grandparents, Gen Z is ready for the next
level: A fully immersive lifestyle and shopping
experience that is fast pervading gaming and
social media and blurring the lines between
real and digital. According to Roblox’s
latest guide, over half of Gen Z say that
styling their avatar is more important to
them than styling themselves in the physical
world. Users bought nearly 1.6 billion digital
fashion items on Roblox in 2023. Digital
self-expression through customizable avatars
and digital creation is also growing fast on
Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit,
to name just a few. And newly emerging
gaming experiences like EVERYWHERE
join the ranks of Decentraland and The
Sandbox to widen the limits of digital
experiences from test-driving a new
prototype car to enjoying a rock concert and
ordering your pizza in the game, for it to be
delivered to your real-life doorstep.
20
Retail and Fashion Holiday Guide 2023
While these trends come with immense
opportunities of user-engagement and
identi昀椀cation, a fully immersive digital
experience also brings responsibility and
challenges: In a digital context, with multiple
stakeholders – the platform operator,
its users, and the brands and advertisers
engaging with them – clearly de昀椀ning
ownership and how it is transferred is
critical. Equally vital for the sustainable
success of an immersive experience are
its interactive components: Users identify
through interaction, and through the creation
of user-generated content (UGC). And for
them to be able to freely do so, platforms
must create an environment characterized by
deep trust and user safety. We have explored
these principles in more depth in our Digital
Trust whitepaper, and the following are
some of the cornerstones of a trustful and
safe digital environment:
•
Robust content moderation under the
auspices of the EU Digital Services Act
(DSA), the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA),
