E-commerce direct marketing using augmented reality

Turning Web customers from "window shoppers" into buyers demands an interactive sales model that informs them, gives them individualized attention, and helps to close the sale at the customer's request. Ideally, sales agents should have in-person meetings with all prospective customers. However, this may not be desirable or feasible. The next best thing is for sales agents to send promotional e-mails to their prospective customers. In this paper, we describe the development of a direct marketing system that uses augmented reality (AR) technology. A set of specially designed markers is used to calibrate the camera and track the motion of the markers for the augmentation of three dimensional product models. There is no special hardware required for this system except a PC camera (e.g., WebCam or ViCAM).