Pfaff / Spann Augmented Reality and Consumer Behavior in E-Commerce

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-7693-8388-1
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 16, 186 Seiten

Reihe: Electronic Commerce & Digital Markets

Augmented Reality (AR) is an innovative technology to improve product evaluation in e-commerce. It enables online consumers to project virtual product models into their surrounding real-world environment in real time using their mobile devices (e.g., projecting a virtual model of a sofa into its dedicated place in the living room via smartphone). AR can thus facilitate a more realistic online product evaluation and potentially increase sales. However, AR's effectiveness may depend on different usage contexts and product characteristics. The main objective of this cumulative dissertation is to provide a better understanding of AR in e-commerce and resulting consumer behavior. To this end, this dissertation studies context- as well as product-related boundary conditions of AR's effectiveness in online product evaluation, and consumers' underlying psychological mechanisms. The author presents four independent articles, which are nested in a general introduction and conclusion. Methodologically, experimental approaches are pursued that allow for drawing causal conclusions (field, laboratory, lab-in-field experiment, and quasi-experimental analysis of retailer data). The first article is a systematic literature review that establishes the foundation for the dissertation by reviewing consumer responses to AR usage in online and offline settings. The three subsequent quantitative-empirical articles examine the following aspects of AR usage: (1) the influence of the AR usage context on consumer perception of the evaluated product, (2) the role of AR in reducing spatial fit uncertainty in e-commerce, and (3) the effectiveness of AR in transferring implicit knowledge in corporate training situations. The results of this dissertation contribute to digital marketing research and provide actionable recommendations for managers.

Alexander Pfaff completed his PhD at the LMU Munich School of Management at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) in 2024, where he worked as a Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Electronic Commerce and Digital Markets from 2018 to 2024. He holds a B.Sc. in Economics (2015) and a M.Sc. in Business Administration (2018) from LMU. During his postgraduate studies, he also earned a Master of Business Research (2021) from LMU Munich School of Management.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pfaff, Alexander

Spann, Martin

Leseproben

ARTICLE I
The Impact of Augmented Reality on Consumer Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review5
Alexander Pfaff Abstract Augmented Reality (AR) is an innovative tool to visualize products and information in consumers' real-world usage contexts in real time. Due to its unique characteristics, AR has been increasingly embraced by businesses of several industries and attracted considerable research interest across various disciplines. As AR has been applied in different contexts throughout the entire customer journey in online- as well as offline settings, AR research yielded diverse results and a comprehensive overview of AR's nuanced effectiveness is lacking. To address this gap, this article provides a systematic literature review of quantitative-empirical studies investigating AR's effects on consumer behavior in consumption-related settings in B2C markets. The 65 identified articles are analyzed and discussed according to the respective phases of the customer journey as well as the AR projection spaces they involve. Finally, implications and directions for future research are derived from the findings of the systematic literature review. Keywords: Augmented Reality, Customer Journey, Projection Spaces, Consumer Behavior, Systematic Literature Review Contents
1 Introduction 2 Methodological Approach 3 Systematic Literature Review 3.1 Classification Framework 3.1.1 Customer Journey Phases 3.1.2 AR Projection Spaces 3.2 Descriptive Results 3.3 Main Results 3.3.1 Pre-Purchase Phase 3.3.1.1 Object Projection 3.3.1.2 Subject Projection 3.3.2 Purchase Phase 3.3.2.1 Object Projection 3.3.2.2 Subject Projection 3.3.3 Post-Purchase Phase 3.3.3.1 Object Projection 3.3.3.2 Subject Projection 4 Implications for Future Research 5 Conclusion Appendix References 1 Introduction
Augmented Reality (AR) is an innovative tool to visualize products and information, as it enables users to project virtual elements into their surrounding real-world environments in real time (Azuma et al., 2001). AR can, for instance, project a hologram of a sofa that a consumer considers to purchase into her living room visible through her smartphone camera. AR can thus facilitate consumer product evaluation within the products' intended usage contexts (Heller et al., 2019a). Businesses of several industries have applied AR not only for online product evaluation, yet also for online- and offline advertising as well as the provision of offline services such as in-store navigation, for instance (Caboni & Hagberg, 2019). Such applications have been enabled by AR's unique characteristic of "contextual embedding", which describes the interactive and dynamic integration of virtual elements into the real world – a novel capability that has not been possible with traditional visualization formats, such as images or videos (Hilken et al., 2017). As there are various business applications of AR in course of consumers' purchase journey (see e.g., Wedel et al., 2020), research on AR across different disciplines has yielded diverse results. While it is acknowledged by both researchers and practitioners that AR has the potential to substantially change consumer interaction with businesses (Rauschnabel et al., 2024a), a comprehensive synthesis of AR's usage for different consumer-related applications, resulting outcomes for businesses, underlying behavioral mechanisms, and boundary conditions of its use, however, is lacking. Consequently, the goal of the present article is to provide a domain-based systematic literature review (Palmatier et al., 2018), contributing an integrated overview of the current state of knowledge regarding AR's effects on consumer behavior in consumption-related settings in B2C markets. To achieve this goal, the systematic review uses the phases of the customer journey as classification framework and categorizes the effects of AR's application along each of the phases depending on the AR projection space studied in the respective articles (i.e., object-and subject projection). The systematic review reveals that AR research primarily focused on the purchase phase of the customer journey and was mainly considered with investigating AR's effectiveness compared to traditional visualization formats (such as images). Based on the findings of the systematic literature review, research gaps are identified and several potential avenues for future research are discussed. The remainder of this article is structured as follows: The subsequent section outlines the methodological approach of the systematic literature review, drawing on the inclusion criteria and the search strategy to identify relevant articles. Section 3 describes the classification framework along which the identified articles are categorized, and presents the descriptive as well as main results of the systematic literature review. Section 4 derives implications for future research based on the findings of the systematic literature review. The article concludes with a brief summary in section 5. 2 Methodological Approach
The methodological approach follows the steps outlined in Webster & Watson (2002). First, criteria for the inclusion of articles in the analysis are defined. Second, a strategy for literature search and study retrieval is developed. Third, the basic scheme for structuring the identified literature is conceptualized. As the goal of the systematic literature review is to provide an integrated overview of the current state of knowledge regarding AR's effects on consumer behavior in consumption-related settings in B2C markets, the focus is on articles that examine user interaction with AR technology in consumption-related settings in B2C markets. To this end, inclusion criteria were defined with regard to the research methodology applied, the research domain as well as the quality standard of the publication outlet. The methodological interest is in quantitative-empirical evidence of AR's effects on consumer behavior. Therefore, qualitative-empirical studies as well as purely theoretical contributions are excluded. In accordance with the goal of the review, the research domain (Palmatier et al., 2018) is restricted to consumption-related settings in B2C markets. For the present review, consumption-related settings are understood as any circumstances that contribute to changes in consumers' purchase likelihood in the near or distant future. In such, not only behavioral, yet also intentional, psychological, and attitudinal outcomes will be analyzed. Following this definition of consumption-related settings, studies on user interaction with AR in education, software engineering/design, ergonomics, and manufacturing, for instance, are not in scope of this review. To ensure a certain standard of quality, articles published in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings rated above or equal to B according to the VHB-JOURQUAL3 (JQ3)6 ranking are included. Articles published in C-rated as well as in non-ranked journals are only included if the journal's 2022 impact factor without self-cites (JIF) is above or equal to 4 according to Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (JCR)7. To identify and retrieve relevant literature, a keyword-based search using the databases Clarivate Web of Science Core Collection and EBSCO Business Source Complete was conducted. The broad search term "augmented reality" was searched for not only in the title, abstract, or article keywords, but also in the full text of an article. To comply with the review goal of a consumption-related focus, articles were required to contain the keywords "consumer" or "customer" throughout their main body. For the same reason, articles containing the terms "technology acceptance model" or "unified theory of acceptance and use of technology" were excluded. Furthermore, articles had to be written in English language. As the Web of Science Core Collection is not only business-related (in contrast to EBSCO Business Source Complete), search was limited to business as well as adjacent research areas, such as economics, psychology, operations research, transportation, and behavioral sciences. There were no restrictions applied in terms of the publication year, the usage channel of AR (both online- and offline channel), the device used for viewing AR content (e.g., mobile devices and smart glasses), the source of study data (both primary and secondary data), and the methodology of quantitative research (both experimental and non-experimental research). Subsequently, the resulting set of retrieved articles was manually screened for compliance with the aforementioned inclusion criteria. Non-empirical contributions, purely qualitative studies, as well as articles not focusing on AR or consumption-related AR settings were excluded. See Appendix A for a summary of the inclusion criteria and search strategy. Eventually, a structural scheme was conceptualized based on the identified articles....