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Virtual try-on (VTO) technology offers an opportunity for fashion and beauty brands to provide enriched self-explorative experiences. The increased popularity of VTOs makes it urgent to understand the drivers and consequences of the exploration of styles in VTO contexts (herein called self-explorative engagement). Notably, little is known about the antecedent and outcomes of the personalized self-explorative experience central to VTOs. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap.

An online quasi-experiment (N = 500) was conducted in the context of fashion and beauty VTOs. Participants were asked to virtually try on sunglasses or lipsticks and subsequently answer a questionnaire measuring the key constructs: self-presence (i.e. physical similarity and identification), self-explorative engagement (i.e. exploration of styles in VTO context), brand cognitive processing and brand attitude. The authors analyze the data with structural equation modeling via maximum likelihood estimation in LISREL.

The experience of self-presence during consumers’ use of VTOs in augmented reality environments has a positive effect on self-explorative engagement. Furthermore, a mediation analysis reveals that self-explorative engagement improves brand attitude via brand cognitive processing. The results are confirmed for two popular fashion and beauty brands.

Grounded in extended self theory, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to show that a realistic VTO experience encourages self-extension via a process starting from the exploration of styles and results in increased brand cognitive processing and more positive brand attitudes. The exploration of styles is enabled by self-presence.

The aim of this paper is to explore the effect of telepresence, social presence and consumer involvement on intention to purchase, with an intervening impact of three dimensions of consumer brand engagement (cognitive processing, affection processing and activation).

The study followed a surveying technique and an adopted questionnaire was used to collect data from 426 shoppers of apparels. The model was tested using Smart PLS and it was found that there is a positive relationship between telepresence, social presence and consumer brand involvement with consumer brand engagement, which also mediates their relationship with intention to purchase.

This study offers analytical evidence for telepresence, social presence and involvement of customers and advances the literature of brand engagement. Marketers can benefit from this study and design their future campaigns to enhance the involvement of customers by utilizing the outcomes of this study.

This study offers analytical evidence for telepresence, social presence and involvement of customers and advances the literature of brand engagement. Marketers can benefit from this study and design their future campaigns to enhance the involvement of customers by utilizing the outcomes of this study.