An Online Platform in 3D Virtual Environment, a Tool in

Entrepreneurship Empowerment for Goods and Services Supply Chain

IOANNIS DAGKINIS1, PANAGIOTIS PSOMAS2, ASPASIA VLACHVEI3,

ANDREAS KOSKERIS4, DIMITRIS ZIOUZIOS5, ELTON-ANTONIS FRENGKOU4,

NIKITAS NIKITAKOS1

University of the Aegean

Korai 2a, Chios,

GREECE

Patra, Peloponnesus,

GREECE

approach to support businesses and consumers to successfully promote their products and services in

exhibitions through virtual reality, overcoming problems of transport, cost, and weakness for their participation

due to insularity. Several activities were developed in the 3D Virtual World, involving the entrepreneurial spirit

with innovative activities and procedures, increasing opportunities and putting theoretical knowledge into

practice. The S.A.A.T. online expo platform uses 3D virtual reality (VR) to enhance entrepreneurship focused

on the agri-food domain and tourism since it is possible for SMEs to promote products and services by

overcoming distance problems from potential customers and interested investors, easily. According to the

above-mentioned, the online S.A.A.T. expo platform provides some of the main functions of a modern virtual

exhibition, to improve the applications of VR in those fields.

1 Introduction

Globalization and world economic growth have

made it simpler to interact and exchange products

and services. With the development of technology

like virtual trading platforms, artificial intelligence,

and computer robots during the past ten years, there

has been a dramatic shift in business models and

investing strategies, [1]. These latest technologies

may result in increased performance, productivity,

the future demand for promoting sustainable

products, [2]. The current technology revolution can

benefit all businesses irrespective of the company

size. For example, by exploiting the technological

developments of virtual reality which can enhance

processes in an SME that can manage business

activities remotely wherever they take place.

technologies can be an important enabler, especially

in cases where proactive or mandatory restrictions

operational processes to improve accessibility to

their online audience, become more competitive,

and by increasing their business performance ensure

their sustainability, [5], [7], [8].

agri-food and tourism business sectors, which are

pillars for the strategic development of European

countries. The development of entrepreneurship in

both of these sectors is a field of employment for a

large proportion of the population, which influences

food and tourism sectors, which will be able to

attract potential customers and help them to learn

more effectively to carry out their activities, [10],

[11]. 3D virtual world simulations can overcome

barriers such as distance, space, and human

resources, and can be used for more efficient, safe

and comfortable training. The use of VR in the

promotion of agri-food products can be a means for

the promotion of agri-food products. Many quality

products are produced in areas where it is difficult

the production activities of highly quality local

products, otherwise, they have to incur large

expenses in transport and participation in live

exhibitions for dissemination of their enterprises.

This virtual world online platform provides the main

functions of a modern virtual exhibition, aiming to

navigating through the stores, and retailers

advertising their products/services.

and will be able to easily create a virtual

environment of products to be promoted from any

Internet access point, either at home or in the

business. Visiting will also make it easier for people

with disabilities to access traditional showrooms,

thus eliminating accessibility barriers. It can

advance the process of modernizing agricultural

for all existing agri-food and tourism supply chains,

which will enhance the extroversion and

competitiveness, especially of very small businesses

that do not have the opportunity to participate in

trade fairs in physical presence.

promotion of products and services through the

platform skips over the presence of intermediaries,

who have a large intervention in the formation of

the final price, shrinking the profit of the producer.

Section 2 describes the virtual technology. Section 3

presents related works and the literature review.

Section 4 describes the innovative online platform

that has been formulated to assist users in exploring

entrepreneurship used in the SAAT project. Section

5 concludes this paper.

The virtual environment can be described as a

computing system, in which interactions take place,

[12]. A virtual trading environment connects

presentations, and interactive online product

displays can be used to create interaction between

exhibitors, organizers, and visitors. Using these

tools, organizers can create a virtual media station

physical location or by logging on from home, [13].

registration, and customers have access to the virtual

tour and the necessary brochure download through

contact details. With the help of artificial

intelligence, exhibitors can track visitors and make

use of this data in the future. Virtual trade shows are

equipped with powerful tracking devices that help

exhibitors follow up on the leads they receive.

Multiple visitors can log in at the same time. This

provided by the emergence and development of VR

technology. One of the greatest key technologies for

the improvement of entrepreneurs in the field of

agricultural products could be the virtual promotion

of agricultural products. The VR technology for

commercial agricultural food and tourism on virtual

shops, we may find that VR is widely applicable and

will create an innovative train of thought and new

ways for agricultural science promotion and

agricultural production. The application of virtual

to agriculture in the fields of scientific research,

teaching, agricultural resources, planning,

production, distribution of goods, and agricultural

machinery design and manufacturing.

The literature review focuses mainly on three

dimensions of advantages of the virtual trade

environment: First, as a marketing tool for

establishing valuable relationships with

for participating in a virtual trading environment,

[13]. The authors conclude that the future of virtual

development of the systems and how they are

integrated into existing technological and strategic

corporate processes for exhibitors and visitors.

not enough, [16]. Virtual marketing capabilities are

necessary to adapt traditional marketing actions to

the virtual environment to gain a competitive

advantage. For instance, the use of virtual

technology in marketing initiatives like trade

exhibitions enables businesses to identify and take

allow a company to create an open, public, and low-

cost global platform with rich content and real-time

data and deploy it widely throughout the supply

chain. These competencies may promote cross-

organizational communication, worldwide reach,

and foreign marketing, which may present

possibilities or obstacles for an individual firm, [18].

Researchers point out that these opportunities can

lead to increased customer loyalty through the

provision of efficient and convenient quality

promoting interaction and connection before and

after physical exposure, [19], [20].

trade platforms are still deemed a sales-generating

marketing tool, [13]. Virtual trading platforms

increase the number of sales orders, although they

mention that the exhibitors and the experience of the

customers moderate the relationships between the

activities and the results, [21].

exchange of information between exhibitors and

visitors, [13], [23]. Virtual trade activities have a

positive effect on maintaining the existing customer

base and gaining new customers from the market,

while managing virtual activities such as customer

marketers, [13], [24].

could replace live trade fairs has been extensively

discussed in the empirical literature and there are

conflicting views, [25]. The virtual environment

should be viewed as a setting that can both

strengthen and enable new knowledge links, [26].

The boundaries between geographic scales and

various sources of knowledge are blending more

and more as the relevance of the virtual environment

companies and their relationships with each other,

[20], [23], [27], is relatively limited. Little is known

about the platforms where trade shows may take

place and their connections. Particularly, less focus

is given to commercial activities associated with

virtual displays [20], [23]. In addition, studies tend

to focus on one stakeholder at a time, mainly

emphasizing the side of exhibitors and neglecting

visitors and organizers, [20], [27], [28]. The further

objective measures for capturing outcomes more

vividly. Along with objective measures, researchers

can also investigate non-sales and non-financial

exhibition objectives, such as information

acquisition, relationship improvement, corporate

image, and the motivation of employees, [21].

S.A.A.T.'s online expo platform provides the main

functions of a modern virtual exhibition, aiming to

support potential users, such as ordinary visitors

navigating through the stores, and retailers

and a Web application Figure 1, Figure 2.

navigate through the stores either in a classic way

(“W/A/S/D” keys for movement and the mouse for

camera direction) or by using the map ("M" key)

and choose the floor and the store to which he wants

to be transferred directly. Furthermore, you can

interact with the advertised products (description,

price) and contact the retailer of the store for more

details and any purchases. More specifically, you

can view the product/service details such as

image/video with its description and contact details

must register and create an account. After logging in

to the web platform with their credentials, they will

be able to submit the details of the store (name,

address, website, tax number) and apply for

acquiring one of the virtual mall's available stores.

After the user’s application is accepted by the

Admin, he will be able to enter the mall with the

retailer’s permission. More specifically, the user

will be able to add/update/remove product details

(logo, description, images/video), internal design,

To address the problem of managing the entities of

the platform, we developed a web application using

Symfony (v6.0), [33] and EasyAdmin [34] bundle

(v4.1) to create a user-friendly administration

backend. Throughout the web application

development, the PHP language version used was

v8.1.

User, Submission, Shop, and Product, using the

string.

user_id, name, address, website, created_at,

updated_at, status, and shop_id. The user_id

corresponds to the unique number of each user from

the user entity. The status field can take 3 values,

"PENDING_MODERATED", "ACCEPTED", or

"DECLINED" depending on whether a response is

pending, accepted, or rejected. Finally, there is the

unique number shop_id which corresponds to the id

the “out” and “in” values, corresponding to the

retailer being online or offline for live chat.

katastima, proion, name, link, description and

uploaded. shop_id corresponds to the unique

number of the shop entity to which this product

belongs. The fields katastima, proion, and name are

strings used to display media (image/video).

displaying the application entities. Depending on the

“ROLE_USER”, the dashboard displays

submissions of the current user and maintains the

ability to perform CRUD operations only on his

submissions, in this case.

build marketing lists and generate qualified sales

leads).

online expo platform is that it was developed with

an emphasis on the needs of the region and the

entrepreneurs of the remote island regions,

considering the peculiarities of entrepreneurship in

the South Aegean.

conventional exhibitions while eliminating the

more business sectors from different regions,

addressing issues of low participation and creating

equal opportunities compared to larger-scale

businesses, while publicity and participation of

more visitors are greater when a larger number of

visitors are allowed to visit.

South Aegean Region" with OPS Code 3437.

S.A.A.T. the online expo platform is a virtual world

platform to promote entrepreneurship. The

trade fairs in physical presence. This virtual

environment aims at supporting commercial

activities, and the potential users, whether they are

men or women will be able to use it with great

through the stores, and retailers advertising their

products/services, so the process of retailers to

promote their products and services will become

more and more intuitive. With the development of

the SSAT online expo platform, the elements

presented in the 3D rendering can optimize the user

experience providing added value to the business

activity of the agri-food and tourism sector. Due to

its extensive features, the virtual reality that has

been used adds more dimensions to the architecture

reality they can explore the real world. Furthermore,

for the tourism sector, virtual reality gives a

complete and detailed picture of a place. Finally,

among the main advantages of virtual reality is that

it helps to form new relationships in a more

effective way compared to real life, providing a new

experience of communicating with people.

the platform as well as its usability will be subject to

further study, where it will be evaluated by users

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Contribution of Individual Authors to the

Creation of a Scientific Article (Ghostwriting

Policy)

The authors equally contributed to the present

research, at all stages from the formulation of the

problem to the final findings and solution.

Sources of Funding for Research Presented in a

Scientific Article or Scientific Article Itself

No funding was received for conducting this study.

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