Augmenting the eye of the beholder: exploring the strategic potential of augmented reality to enhance online service experiences

Abstract

Driven by the proliferation of augmented reality (AR) technologies, many firms are pursuing a strategy of service augmentation to enhance customers' online service experiences. Drawing on situated cognition theory, the authors show that AR-based service augmentation enhances customer value perceptions by simultaneously providing simulated physical control and environmental embedding. The resulting authentic situated experience, manifested in a feeling of spatial presence, functions as a mediator and also predicts customer decision comfort. Furthermore, the effect of spatial presence on utilitarian value perceptions is greater for customers who are disposed toward verbal rather than visual information processing, and the positive effect on decision comfort is attenuated by customers' privacy concerns.

The future of social media in marketing

“…Notably, the company plans to launch a developer platform, so that people can build augmented-reality features that live inside Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp (Wagner 2017). These developments are supported by academic research suggesting that AR often provides more authentic (and hence positive) situated experiences (Hilken et al 2017). Accordingly, whether viewed through glasses or through traditional mobile and tablet devices, the future of social media is likely to look much more visually augmented.…”

Seeing eye to eye: social augmented reality and shared decision making in the marketplace

“…4 Study 2: (Indirect) effects of image-enhanced or text-only acts with static or dynamic POV sharing on (through) social empowerment and (on) recommendation comfort 7 = "strongly agree"; α = .77; Dillard et al 1989) that included items such as "I was concerned with making a good impression through my recommendation." Previous research identifies customer preferences for verbal versus visual information processing as a boundary condition in AR experiences (Hilken et al 2017). We therefore controlled for participants' preferred style-of-processing, by asking them to complete a ten-item measure (α = .75; Ramsey and Deeter-Schmelz 2008) on a four-point scale ("always true" to "always false"), where high (low) scores imply a visual (verbal) disposition.…”

“…Many firms, including Amazon, IKEA, and L'Oreal, already rely on augmented reality (AR) to enhance the online experience of their customers (Porter and Heppelmann 2017). By projecting virtual content (e.g., 3D furniture items from an online shop) into the physical environment (e.g., a customer's living space), 1 AR lets customers get a better feel for products, and this makes them feel more comfortable with purchase decisions (Heller et al 2019;Hilken et al 2017). Yet, aside from ratings and reviews, when shopping online customers commonly rely on the advice of friends and family (Zhu et al 2010), which they expect to be able to obtain without having to switch between channels or apps (Brynjolfsson et al 2013).…”

Editorial – Ten Trends Shaping the Future of Marketing: Considerations for the Academics

“…When reviewing recent articles published in top marketing journals, it is evident that these authors are well connected to the contemporary phenomena and are endeavouring to provide greater insights while maintaining the rigor of research in theoretical and methodological aspects. For example, recent studies have been looking into how new marketing technologies change consumer decision-making, information process and various behavioural aspects (Hilken, de Ruyter, Chylinski, Mahr & Keeling, 2017;Steinhoff, Arli, Weaven & Kozlenkova, 2019). Specifically some of these studies delve into the effect of multisensory technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and various sensory inputs (including offline reality) on consumer's perception and behaviour in digital environments (Biswas, Lund & Szocs, 2019;Helmefalk, 2019;Motoki, Saito, Nouchi, Kawashima & Sugiura, 2019;Petit, Velasco & Spence, 2019;Rauschnabel, Felix & Hinsch, 2019).…”