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Despite the importance of the service design process, existing prototyping methods still have technical limitations, thus hampering the development of realistic service-experience simulations that can effectively reproduce service delivery situations and environments. In this study, a service-prototyping method based on 3D virtual reality (VR) technologies, the physical environment of a test bed, and related standard management procedures are described. In addition, a service-prototyping process for a servicescape is proposed based on a case study of an actual duty-free shop. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study adopts a qualitative approach, using case studies to undertake a design and improvement plans for brand guidance structures for the brand observation convenience of customers in a duty-free shop.

The findings of the study suggested environmental components and concept of 3D VR based test bed as an effective tool at the stage of service prototyping the core of new service development (NSD), and introduced practical methods for service prototyping in actual duty-free shop. The case study is significant due to the fact that it proved validity and practicality of the methods applied to service prototyping topic derivation and test process through target service analysis rather than optimal alternative selection.

This study emphasizes the importance of prototyping during NSD and the value of the service prototyping test bed for practical use. It also proposes guidelines for the establishment and management of the test bed.

In terms of service design research, this study also presented detailed operating procedures and methods through the new concept and in-depth case study of service prototyping using 3D VR technology.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of “shopscapes” the authors define as the imaginary geography each person or group of people builds based on his daily experiences and practices in reference to retail environments and activities and to apply it to children.

The authors develop an original and child-centred methodology, by combining drawings and interviews and the authors focus the approach, not on the final drawings but on the drawing activity per se where children work in pairs and collaborate.

The authors demonstrate the validity of the approach by proposing that a drawing can only be validly interpreted through the content of an open verbal exchange with its author/s. The activity of drawing, and of mapping when “shopscapes” are questioned, is interestingly richer and more fruitful than just the final result.

The originality of the work lies in the concept of shopscapes and in the methodology used in order to reveal them. The authors intend to reveal the nature and range of children’s “shopscapes” with the objective of providing reliable information about on how children perceive the retailing experience.

This paper reviews the pros and cons of different parametric modeling methods, which can provide a theoretical reference for parametric reconstruction of 3D human body models for virtual fitting.

In this study, we briefly analyze the mainstream datasets of models of the human body used in the area to provide a foundation for parametric methods of such reconstruction. We then analyze and compare parametric methods of reconstruction based on their use of the following forms of input data: point cloud data, image contours, sizes of features and points representing the joints. Finally, we summarize the advantages and problems of each method as well as the current challenges to the use of parametric modeling in virtual fitting and the opportunities provided by it.

Considering the aspects of integrity and accurate of representations of the shape and posture of the body, and the efficiency of the calculation of the requisite parameters, the reconstruction method of human body by integrating orthogonal image contour morphological features, multifeature size constraints and joint point positioning can better represent human body shape, posture and personalized feature size and has higher research value.

This article obtains a research thinking for reconstructing a 3D model for virtual fitting that is based on three kinds of data, which is helpful for establishing personalized and high-precision human body models.

This paper aims to understand how immigrant entrepreneurs use digital opportunities to overcome the liability of newness and foreignness and how an immigrant's ethnicity can be digitally performed as an asset in business.

The study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach using social media content. The data consist of over 3,500 posts, images and screenshots from Facebook, Instagram and the webpages of seven successful Vietnamese restaurants in Sweden. Grounded content analysis was conducted using NVivo.

The findings suggest that digitalising ethnic artifacts can mediate and facilitate three digital performances that together can turn ethnicity from a liability to an asset: (i) preserving performance through digital ethnicising, (ii) embracing performance through digital generativitising and (iii) appropriating performance through digital fusionising. The results support the introduction of a conceptual framework depicting the interwoven duality of horizontal and vertical boundary blurring, in which the former takes place between the offline and online spaces of immigrant businesses, and the latter occurs between the home and host country attachment of the immigrant businesses.

This study responds to calls for understanding how immigrant entrepreneurs can overcome the liability of foreignness. It offers a fresh look at ethnicity, which has been seen in a negative light in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship. This study illuminates that ethnicity can be used as a resource in immigrant entrepreneurship, specifically through the use of digital artifacts and digital platforms.

This paper hypothesizes that contemporary Gulf cities are not an evolution of traditional settlements but rather forms of modern cities that emerged during the second half of the 20th century after the discovery of oil, the economic boom following the mid 1970s oil crisis and finally political, economic, technological and communication globalization that swept this region since the beginning of the 21st century. While focusing on the case of Kuwait city, the paper reflects on several examples from the Gulf region cities to discuss their development as hybrid forms of modern cities. The paper adopts the theoretical framework proposed by Appadurai in 1996 to understand the flow of modernity through the Gulf cities' scapes. This theoretical framework provides an adequate understanding of Gulf cities evolution and modifications required to make them more adequate to the Gulf region conditions.