Try-on experience with augmented reality comforts your decision Focusing on the roles of immersion and psychological ownership

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how augmented reality (AR) try-on experiences facilitate consumers' shopping decision. Focusing on the immersion and psychological ownership, the study investigated how the properties of AR experiences (environmental embedding (EE) and simulated physical control (SPC)) affect decision comfort. Design/methodology/approach This research theoretically and empirically analyzes how each property of AR experiences affects consequential psychological states and then further increases decision comfort by employing an existing AR try-on mobile application. A total of 99 valid responses were used for the partial least square structural equation modeling analysis. One's prior AR try-on experience was predicted as a moderator and analyzed using SPSS-based PROCESS macro. Findings The results demonstrated that EE and SPC evoke immersion and the feeling of ownership of a virtual product, which increased decision comfort. The moderating effect of one's prior AR try-on experience showed that the impact of EE and SPC on immersion was attenuated for those with prior experience. Further, immersion mediated the effect of EE but SPC on the feeling of ownership, which corroborated the direct effect of SPC on the feeling of ownership. Practical implications Firms must consider technological and user-experience features that can induce users to perceive high levels of AR characteristics such as EE and SPC. Practitioners should develop realistic content that can correctly place virtual products on users to enhance EE. Including more interactive features is encouraged to provide users with a feeling of control toward the virtual product that directly leads to ownership and positively affects decision making. Further, practitioners need to be cautious about consumers getting used to the new technology; retailers and marketers need to focus on creating new and innovative content to continually engage customers. Originality/value This study adopted EE and SPC to determine how each property of AR experience forms the consequential psychological states, particularly depending on one's prior experience. Methodologically, the study provided external validity in conducting an experiment by adopting an existing AR mobile application available in the market and employing an objective measure of respondents (e.g. prior AR try-on experience).