Can consumers’ gamified, personalized, and engaging experiences with VR fashion apps increase in-app purchase intention by fulfilling needs?

Abstract

While the development of virtual reality (VR) apps is trending among fashion retailers to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and promote consumers’ online shopping, less is understood about whether and the way these new VR apps increase consumers’ in-app purchase. This study was designed to address this issue by applying self-determination theory within the context of Taobao Life, a 3D avatar-based and game-featured virtual world on the Taobao app. Specifically, we investigated (1) whether the extent to which a VR fashion app provides consumers with a sense of gamified experience (H1: challenge, and H2: achievement), personalized experience (H3: avatar customization, and H4: avatar identification), and engaging experience (H5: social presence, and H6: social support) fulfills their competence, autonomy, and relatedness needs; (2) whether these intrinsic needs fulfill determine positive consumer behavioral intentions (H7: intention to continue to use VR apps, and H8: intention to make in-app purchase), and (3) whether the intention to continue to use VR apps leads to a positive in-app purchase intention (H9). We tested the above empirically by conducting an online survey via Dynata, and the dataset of 251 responses was analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings of our research provide theoretical and practical implications that can be applied in the fashion retail business.

The super engagers of freemium gamified services: using multimethod approach to examine why highly interactive consumers become paying consumers

“…Further, it will extend current research which has predominantly examined self-reported data to study IAPs (e.g. Dinsmore et al, 2017;Lau and Ki, 2021). Therefore, the following research question guides the study:…”

“…Dinsmore et al. , 2017; Lau and Ki, 2021) by examining the behavioral predictors of paying behavior under varying levels of daily usage behavior and social competition motivation.…”

“…Lastly, the research augments the freemium literature that predominantly uses self-reported data to investigate IAP intentions (e.g. Dinsmore et al, 2017;Lau and Ki, 2021) by examining the behavioral predictors of paying behavior under varying levels of daily usage behavior and social competition motivation.…”

LET'S CONNECT IN METAVERSE. BRAND'S NEW DESTINATION TO INCREASE CONSUMERS' AFFECTIVE BRAND ENGAGEMENT & THEIR SATISFACTION AND ADVOCACY

“…Previous research emphasized the integration of gamification-based activities in various areas, such as gamification-based activities in the medical-care sector (Tuah et al, 2021), organization and well-being of employees (Hammedi et al, 2021), education domain (Mathew and Pillai, 2022;Sethi et al, 2021), retailing (Lau and Ki, 2021), tourism (Jang and Hsieh, 2021) and, banking (Nasirzadeh and Fathian, 2020). Existing studies provided evidence of a positive association of AR/VRbased gamification with brand loyalty (Hsu and Chen, 2018), brand attitude , brand awareness (Abou-Shouk, and Soliman,2021), brand engagement (Xi andHamari, 2020), brand involvement (Nobre andFerreira, 2017), brand love (Hsu and Chen, 2018a) and buying impulse (Zhang et al, 2020;Chawaa, 2020).…”

The effect of touch simulation in virtual reality shopping

“…System-related factors include the characteristics of VR environments identified by comparing the differences between VR and physical (Lombart et al, 2020 ; van Herpen et al, 2016 ; Waterlander et al, 2015 ) or online environments (Hsu et al, 2020 ) and examining the degrees of immersion driven by various types of hardware, such as head-mounted displays, body-tracking sensors, and motion-tracked controllers that enable walk-around navigation (Alshaer et al, 2017 ; Gorini et al, 2011 ; Lee & Chung, 2008 ; Shin & Shin, 2011 ). Similar to immersions, researchers have also explored other determinants that induce virtual experience for consumers, such as vividness and interactivity (Hur et al, 2019 ; Kang et al, 2020 ; Kim et al, 2021 ; Park et al, 2018 ; Violante et al, 2019 ), impressiveness (Peukert et al, 2019 ; Violante et al, 2019 ), and customization/personalization (Elboudali et al, 2020 ; Lau & Ki, 2021 ; Shuai et al, 2018 ).…”