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As immersive technologies gain wider adoption, contemporary service researchers are tasked with studying their service experiences in ways that preserve and attend to their holistic and human characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to provide service researchers with a new qualitative approach to studying immersive technologies.

Using logic and following established methodological rules, this article develops the scope, definition and set of procedures for a novel form of netnography specifically adapted for the study of immersive technologies: immersive netnography. The research question is “How might netnography be adapted to research service experiences in virtual and augmented environments, which include and overlap with the notion of a Metaverse?”

Immersive netnography should be at the vanguard of phenomenological service experience studies of augmented reality, virtual reality and the Metaverse. A set of data collection, analysis, ethical and representational research practices, immersive netnography is adapted to digital media phenomena (customer and employee) that include immersive technology experiences. Developed through logical argumentation after analyzing key differences between social media and immersive technology, immersive netnography is procedurally customized for experience research in immersive technology environments.

Three of the most significant practical limitations to producing high-quality netnography are rapidly changing contexts, scarce time resources and narrow researcher skillsets.

Industries and organizations may benefit from a new, holistically focused, ethically robust and culturally attuned market research method for understanding service experience in immersive technology contexts.

There have been no prior studies that develop netnography for the service research opportunities presented by immersive technologies. By applying the rigorous methodological guidance provided in this paper, future service researchers may find value in using specifically adapted qualitative research methods to study immersive technology experiences.

Due to the lack of relevant literatures on the application of mobile augmented reality (AR) service in beauty industry, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact of the mobile AR service on consumers' purchase behavior and brand awareness in beauty industry. And this study also wants to identify the different effects of the relationship among flow experience (concentration, playfulness and exploratory behavior), decision comfort and purchase intention moderated by different levels of consumer characteristics (individualism and fashion innovativeness).

This study set up a research model based on SOR model. The study used AR mobile app named “Youcam Makeup” as stimulus to do the questionnaire survey. First, the authors describe the way to use this AR mobile app and make sure each participant experience this app for about 5 min to understand AR well and finally, finished the questionnaire. SPSS and AMOS were used to do data analysis.

The results of this study showed that first, in the field of fashion and beauty makeup, compared with the ability to control or modify virtual contents – the perception of vividness, reality and aesthetics – are more relevant to consumers. Second, besides the playfulness that AR provides, AR technology can also encourage exploratory behavior in consumers, which will directly affect their intention to purchase. Finally, when using mobile AR technology, consumers with different levels of individualism or fashion innovativeness will gain different perceptions of their purchase intention.

First, the study targets millennial female consumers. The future studies can be conducted on consumers of different age groups. Second, the sampling of this study is insufficient; if it had more samples, the results would be more accurate. Finally, AR is integrated into people's lives; therefore, to not be limited to millennial consumers, demographic characteristics need to be applied to future research.

This study provides a theoretical basis for marketers to formulate marketing strategies. First of all, marketers can use this technology to provide consumers with a more vivid and specific online shopping experience. Second, technical developers can focus on developing the features of AR with the strongest consumer perception based on the results of this study. Finally, this study researched consumer traits that can deepen understanding of both emerging technologies and consumer behavior as compared to research only on mobile AR services. Marketers need to understand the characteristics of consumers when making marketing plans and expand the characteristics of AR technology corresponding to the characteristics of consumers to attract consumers with different attributes.

By using interactive technology, the brand can be closer to consumers and provide help and fun for consumers when they consume online. AR can also lead to future tool reuse behavior, thus establishing long-term relationships with consumers. More than that, AR can be used with the mobile phone, which can be used anytime and anywhere, eliminating space and time constraints. Therefore, the brand can establish cheap and extensive technology as a marketing strategy. Also, it can become one of the most common marketing tools.

This research fills the gap in the literature on mobile AR technology in the beauty industry. Such knowledge will not only facilitate the online development of brands but also help support retailers' development in the beauty industry, providing necessary capabilities for the expansion and application of this new technology. With regard to marketing strategies, the study on consumer characteristic provides the knowledge foundation for marketers to create marketing strategies, which is easier for them to formulate marketing schemes favorable to the brand for varying consumers.

This study aims to apply theory on consumer learning in virtual experiences to compare how media technologies (i.e. virtual reality [VR] and standard websites) and users’ gender influence the ways in which tourists gather pre-purchase information.

A laboratory experiment with fully immersive VR was conducted to examine consumers’ behavior in gathering pre-purchase information. The sample comprised 128 consumers who had taken a cruise vacation or who were considering purchasing a cruise package in the near future.

The results generally reveal the central role of the feeling of presence, which, in turn, positively impacts users’ enjoyment and aspects of consumer learning (i.e. brand attitude, product knowledge and purchase intent). In particular, the results suggest that compared with standard websites, VR facilitated the tourists’ learning as consumers, especially among women, who tend to dominate the information-gathering stage of planning family vacations.

The results imply that travel agencies and tourism centers working with cruise vacation companies should incorporate VR to make their offers more attractive, especially to women.

The study was the first to apply theory on consumer learning in the cruise tourism industry, specifically to compare fully immersive VR devices versus standard websites and gauge the effect of gender.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of interactivity and vividness on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment and their consequent impacts on consumer behavioral responses in a retail furniture VR store context. Considering the lack of VR empirical research, the indirect effect of interactivity and vividness on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment through telepresence and the moderating effect of consumer previous experience with VR are also included.

A commercial IKEA VR store was chosen for the study. Head-mounted display (HMD) VR headsets were employed for the VR shopping experience. The study was conducted at a laboratory at a large university in the southeastern United States. A total of 146 college students participated in the study.

Vividness had significant positive effects on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment, which in turn influenced attitude towards VR and behavioral intentions. Interactivity did not have positive impacts on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment. However, it indirectly affected perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment through telepresence. The findings also proved the moderating effect of consumer previous VR experience between interactivity and perceived usefulness and between interactivity and perceived enjoyment. The relationship between attitude and behavioral intentions was also positive.

Notwithstanding the benefits of VR in relation to its utilitarian, hedonic, and behavioral values, little is known about consumers' responses towards the usage of VR as a shopping tool. The present study can be considered as a starting point in understanding the usefulness of VR from consumer and managerial perspectives. The findings of VR indicated in the study will help practitioners understand the urgency of adopting VR in a retail setting.

The usage of augmented reality (AR) in online shopping websites provides a “try-on” experience for consumers. AR technology combines the virtual and real world. Previous studies have addressed AR usage’s benefits to consumers’ online shopping experience. However, this study aims to explore the dark side of AR usage in consumers’ online purchasing process.

The authors conduct six experiments to examine whether AR usage leads to adverse effects on consumers’ purchase intention and explain the mechanism of its dark side.

The result shows that AR usage in online shopping websites reduces consumers’ purchase intention. The authors further reveal that the usage of AR leads to more vital psychological ownership of the product, and psychological ownership positively relates to cognitive conflict. Cognitive conflict explains the negative influence of AR usage on purchase intention.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the impact of embedded AR function of websites on consumers’ decision-making process. Also, it is the first study on the application of AR in a real shopping scene, which makes the study of AR close to reality. Second, psychological ownership is introduced in this study. Although there are many types of research on psychological ownership, few scholars have explored it in AR research. Third, most studies stress the advantages of using AR during purchase; this research demonstrates that embedding AR function in a shopping website may negatively affect purchase intention.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of telepresence and fantasy in an online apparel shopping experience. Online apparel consumers undergo a virtual product experience (telepresence) that simulates the product experience in a brick‐and‐mortar store. Fantasy entails the pleasurable mental imagery involving product use.

A total of 86 female university students completed a survey after browsing a stimulus web site in a laboratory setting. Path analysis was used to identify hypothesized relationships between telepresence, fantasy, shopping enjoyment, willingness to purchase, and willingness to patronize the online retailer.

Results showed that telepresence influenced consumer fantasy and both telepresence and consumer fantasy led to shopping enjoyment (experiential value). Telepresence, fantasy, and shopping enjoyment directly contributed to willingness to purchase from the online retailer, whereas telepresence, fantasy and shopping enjoyment contributed indirectly to willingness to patronize the online retailer.

The study used a sample of female university students in the USA. This limits its generalizability to all consumers. It also examined one web site feature; other features may produce different effects.

Findings suggest that business practitioners implement features on their web sites to yield telepresence and fantasy, which may enhance purchase and patronage responses towards their site.

This study enhances understanding of two variables requiring further study, telepresence and fantasy, in online apparel shopping experience.

Augmented reality (AR) has emerged as a novel communication tool, which adds virtual computer-generated information to a viewer’s real life. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of AR technology on consumers’ experience.

Four experiments were performed to test the effect of AR-based product display on the consumer’s attitude and the underlying mechanism of the effect.

The results have demonstrated that self-referencing reality simulation mediates the effect of AR technology on consumers’ product attitude, and the effect is attenuated when the consumers hold quality beliefs rather than taste beliefs or when the product is a luxury brand.

The current research suggests that managers should develop and adopt AR technology when presenting their products in front of consumers, which can improve consumers’ product attitude. Additionally, emphasizing the taste of target products rather than quality will strengthen the positive effect of AR technology on product attitude. Furthermore, managers of luxury brands should present their products in a traditional way, which induce an exclusive perception rather than using AR technology.

This paper investigates the underlying mechanism of how AR technology improves consumers’ product attitude and shopping experience, to fill the gap in consumers’ unique experience with AR technology. Furthermore, the moderated effect of consumer beliefs and product difference has also been examined in this study, which attributes to the research of product differentiation.

Currently, many firms have established brand fan pages on various social network sites. The purpose of this paper is to extend the conventional trust theory, which involves only perspective of trust.

This study targeted community members who have purchased tourist packages from travel agencies and have joined the official brand fan pages of the agencies for at least one year. A total of 646 valid samples were collected.

Structural equation modeling was employed to conduct path analyses, and the results show that the seven hypothetical paths proposed in this study are supported by the theoretical model, which exhibited desirable goodness-of-fit.

Finally, practical suggestions are offered for community managers.

This study was conducted by integrating the models of consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer interactions.

Integrating the two‐system (reflective vs. impulsive) model and the “stimulus‐organism‐response” framework, the purpose of this paper is to construct and empirically test a model that examines online impulse buying as a phenomenon triggered by system design factors.

A laboratory experimental design with a 2×2 full factorial design involving 151 undergraduate students was used to validate the effects of system design stimuli on online impulse buying. Interactivity and vividness, two design factors, were manipulated and a fictitious VCD movie store was created, with four storefronts representing each combination of treatments.

A compelling and sociable virtual experience as conceptualized with telepresence and social presence has a significant effect on buying impulses over and above traditional marketing/product stimuli. Such virtual experience can be created through the usage of interactive and vivid website features. Furthermore, cognition positively moderates the relationship between buying impulse and the actual purchasing behavior.

The findings provide valuable guidance in website design that can stimulate online impulse buying. The results also indicate the importance of providing cognitive intervention at the purchasing stage.

A significant extension of the “stimulus‐organism‐response” framework is to introduce presence as the system stimulus that captures the overall virtual experience and to specify the associated design features; i.e. interactivity and vividness. By incorporating the two‐system model, this study offers a theoretical underpinning of the role of cognitive processing in impulse buying.

The present study aims to propose a framework elucidating the attributes of mobile augmented reality (AR) shopping apps (i.e., spatial presence, perceived personalization and perceived intrusiveness) and how they translate to downstream consumer-related outcomes (i.e., immersion, psychological ownership and stickiness to the retailer).

By conducting a questionnaire-based survey, 308 responses were collected, and the data were submitted to partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN) analyses.

A few important findings were generated from the present study. First, attributes of mobile augmented reality shopping apps (i.e., spatial presence, perceived personalization and perceived intrusiveness) influence stickiness to the retailer through immersion and consumer empowerment in serial. Second, immersion positively influences psychological ownership. Third, the optimum stimulation level moderates the relationship between spatial presence and immersion. Lastly, a post-hoc exploratory finding yielded by the multigroup analysis uncovered the moderating effect of gender.

This study offers a novel contribution to the smart retail literature by investigating the role of mobile AR shopping apps in predicting consumers' stickiness to the retailer. A holistic framework elucidating the serial mediating effect of immersion and consumer empowerment, and the moderating roles of optimum stimulation level and gender were validated.