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Drawing on virtual liminoid theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine factors that induce a multisensory flow experience in an e-shopping context through the use of augmented-reality interactive technology (ARIT).

To validate the research framework, a task-based laboratory study was performed. Participants were recruited through a snowball e-mail method and requested to freely and independently use ARIT for clothes fitting in the laboratory, after which they completed a questionnaire; 336 valid responses were received.

Empirical results revealed that three decorating psychological states (sense of body ownership, sense of ownership control, and self-explorative engagement) directly induced a multisensory flow experience. Furthermore, two multisensory factors (sense of self-location and haptic imagery) mediated the multisensory flow experience through these three decorating psychological states.

Consumers not only rely on generating self-display for optimal fitting in virtual avatar decoration in an e-shopping context but also concentrate more on expression and control of self-body. As consumers’ decorating psychological states require an ideal form of self-expression, a high degree of autonomy in exploring self-decoration options will create more value for consumers. Considering that expressing and controlling the self-body in addition to self-explorative engagement in virtual avatar decoration will trigger the flow experience in an e-shopping context, increasing the use of multisensory ARIT to trigger decorating psychological states in e-shopping contexts is highly recommended.

In this study, a relationship was constructed among virtual liminoid theory, flow theory, and multisensory technology, and an integrated conceptual framework was developed for the relationship between decorating psychological states and multisensory flow experience.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dominance of athlete endorser characteristics (i.e. moral character vs warmth) on athlete endorser perception and the influence of tarnished athlete endorsers (i.e. immoral character vs coldness) on brand evaluations from the perspectives of perceiver characteristics, including dispositional tendency, innate moral intuitions, and self-location (SL).

This research consists of three experimental studies with 135, 72, and 91 participants, respectively. Study 1 compared the dominance of moral character and warmth on athlete endorser perception. Study 2 examined the impact of perceiver characteristics on the cause-and-effect relationship between tarnished athlete endorsers (i.e. immoral character vs coldness) and brand evaluations. Study 3 investigated the cross-cultural generalizability of the US-based research findings in Study 2 for Indians.

Moral character is more influential than warmth on athlete endorser evaluations. Tarnished athlete endorsers with immoral character exert more negative influence than tarnished athlete endorsers with coldness characteristic on brand evaluations. Except for dispositional tendency, innate moral intuitions and SL moderate brand evaluations. Endorser and perceiver characteristics yield asymmetric patterns of influence on Americans’ and Indians’ brand evaluations.

Future research is needed to verify the causal effects of thinking styles on the relationship between tarnished athlete endorsers and brand evaluations.

The determination of endorsement continuity has to jointly consider the characteristics of endorsers, perceivers, and cultures.

This research contributes to the endorsement research by advancing the research scopes of athlete endorser, perceiver, and culture characteristics.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Decision-making in human resources management is done at both the micro and macro level of organizations. Unfortunately, the decisions at each level are often executed without consideration of the other, and current theory reflects this issue. In response to a call for integration of micro- and macro-level processes by Huselid and Becker (2011), we review the extant literature on strategic human resources and high-performance work systems to provide recommendations for both research and practice. We aimed to contribute to the literature by proposing the incorporation of the situation awareness literature into the high-performance work systems framework to encourage the alignment of human resources efforts. In addition, we provide practical recommendations for integrating situation awareness and strategic decision-making. We discuss a process for the employment of situation awareness in organizations that might not only streamline human resources management but also result in more effective decisions. Additional considerations include implications for teams, boundary conditions (e.g., individual differences), and measurement.

Emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), have been influencing both the tourism supply side and tourists alike. The purpose of this study is to analyse VR research in tourism and to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review. As the technological connotation of the term VR has been changing and encompasses various VR systems with different capabilities, this paper aims to provide a systematic and structured overview. The overall objective of this paper is to contribute to a thorough understanding of VR research in tourism.

This paper comprehensively reviews and analyses existing literature on VR in tourism, published from 1994 to February 2018. Using a wide variety of sources, these papers were examined so as to give a state-of-the-art literature review and to deepen one’s understanding of the diverse applications of VR in a tourism context. This paper also presents a novel classification of different VR systems according to the level of immersion and depicts their respective technological capabilities.

The advent of new VR hardware necessitates a distinction for different VR systems applied in the tourism sector. Research conducted during the past three years has been focussing on the application of head-mounted displays, which reflects the temporal development of VR technology. Regardless of the VR system, most studies examine VR as a marketing tool for promotion and communication purposes during the pre-travel phase, focussing on behavioural aspects. Advances in technology will yield new opportunities and application possibilities for the tourism industry.

The key contribution of this paper lies in its structural approach, which differentiates between non-, semi- and fully immersive VR systems in tourism, as well as the proposition of respective definitions. The concluding part of the paper proposes practical implications for tourism businesses together with directions for future studies.

Utilizing the stimulus-organism-response model, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of augmented reality (AR) (specifically augmentation) on consumers’ affective and behavioral response and to assess whether consumers’ hedonic motivation for shopping moderates this relationship.

An experiment using the manipulation of AR and no AR was conducted with 162 participants aged between 18 and 35. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling and randomly assigned to the control or stimulus group. The hypothesized associations were analyzed using linear regression with bootstrapping.

The paper demonstrates the benefit of using an experiential AR retail application (app) to positively impact purchase intention. The results show that this effect is mediated by positive affective response. Furthermore, hedonic shopping motivation moderates the relationship between augmentation and the positive affective response.

Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalizability to other forms of augmentation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed model using different types of AR stimuli. Furthermore, replication of the study with other populations would increase the generalizability of the findings.

Results of this study provide a valuable reference for retailers of the benefits of using AR when attempting to optimize experiential value in online environments.

The study contributes to experiential retail and consumer purchase behavior research by deepening the conceptualization of the impact of experiential technologies, more specifically AR apps, by considering the role of hedonic shopping motivations.

This research compared wine quality evaluations by wine consumers and wine wholesalers for the same Chardonnay wine at three price levels and four different oak levels. Consumers judged wines mainly by price, regardless of the oak level. Wholesale sales people ignored the prices and judged the wines by the oak level. Wholesalers predicted that consumers would respond based on the wholeaslers' quality judgments, and were unable to accurately predict the consumers' responses. Better targeting of consumers and better training of the wholesale representatives is recommended.

Most offender narrative being studied has been in oral forms, produced in the reciprocal process of researcher-(ex) offender interviews. This chapter offers an introduction to a variation of offender narrative study within the prison and rehabilitation context: the narrative of written autobiography. Since the early 1940s, Chinese reform institutions have required written autobiographies from new admitters, provided with clear presubscripted guidelines of instructions as well as postcensorship. For this chapter, we trace back and analyse this model based on 28 prisoners' autobiographies in mainland China between 2007 and 2009, as well as archive documents in different historical periods. We have found that the mandatory offender autobiographies are highly functional writings with clear requirements that embody the existing power structure. We have also found considerable commonality with findings in Western contexts on the presence and problems of narrative compliance in rehabilitation. We argue that narrative criminology should further engage in understanding the practice of narrative censorship and co-authorship in criminal justice processes, as it takes on different forms in different historical–social contexts.