Consumer behavior in the metaverse

Metaverse is portrayed as the next significant technology innovation with an estimated market opportunity of US $800 billion. Metaverse offers numerous opportunities and an unmatchable user experience, yet its acceptance among the masses is still a long way off. Moreover, within 2 years of its existence and grandiose hype about a huge market potential, the current business sentiments are not so hopeful. Despite the positive and encouraging feedback, the reasons behind the limited success of the metaverse need scientific exploration. This study uses netnography to collect online data from 751 articles (news articles, expert opinions, perspectives, and blogs). Further, we use the text‐mining method of structural topic modeling to generate insights from the text data and perform a sentiment analysis. The identified topics are mapped and explained using the behavioral reasoning theory to highlight “reasons for” and “reasons against” metaverse adoption. The study's findings identify flexibility, brand experience, human centricity, and virtual retail experience as enablers of acceptance of the metaverse, while regulatory issues, usage barriers, financial investment, and skepticism act as barriers to adopting the metaverse. Further, social adventure and social influence were identified as enablers categorized under subjective norms. This study contributes to the scarce literature on metaverse adoption and offers actionable insights to marketers to craft marketing strategies to benefit from the metaverse.

The future of metaverse adoption: A behavioral reasoning perspective with a text‐mining approach

Shukla,

Mishra,

Rana

et al. 2024

How generative AI is (will) change consumer behaviour: Postulating the potential impact and implications for research, practice, and policy

Mogaji,

Jain

2024

This article sheds light on the profound impact of technology on consumer behavior, specifically focusing on the rise of generative AI tools. It highlights how these advancements have revolutionized consumer engagement, purchase decision‐making, and technology interaction. The article underscores the transformative potential of generative AI in shaping consumer behavior through personalized recommendations and interactive shopping experiences. It emphasizes the need for continued research and exploration to comprehend and effectively navigate the ever‐evolving landscape of consumer behavior influenced by generative AI. Additionally, the article identifies implications for research and practice, offers valuable strategies for brands, and presents a comprehensive research agenda to delve deeper into this field. Ultimately, it provides valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities presented by generative AI in consumer behavior, serving as a guiding resource for advancing theory, practice, and policy in this domain.

Purchase spillovers from the metaverse to the real world: The roles of social presence, trialability, and customer experience

Mansoor,

Rahman,

Bowden

2024

The promise of the metaverse as a collective, virtual, and shared social space is revolutionizing digital retail. This study provides groundbreaking insights into customer experience in immersive metaverse environments, as well as into how these experiences on metaverse platforms influence customers' real‐world consumption behaviors. Drawing upon data from metaverse platform users in the US, this study identifies the specific antecedents of a positive customer experience on metaverse platforms, including the role of social presence and trialability. Further, it demonstrates the potential for purchase spillovers from the metaverse to traditional retail channels, extending the omnichannel retail literature. In addition, it examines how early‐stage versus long‐term users of the metaverse shape users' intentions to revisit metaverse platforms. Based on our results, we offer a comprehensive model of customers' metaverse behaviors, which may be used to predict and enhance customers' purchase intentions across channels. Our results also demonstrate that the metaverse is not merely a parallel digital retail channel but instead an influential extension of the customers' real‐world consumption. From a managerial perspective, we offer metaverse operators and retail brand managers insights into how an engaging and immersive customer experience in the metaverse can be developed to support metaverse platform growth, and targeted brand strategies that translate into real‐world gain for both the brand and the customer. The findings suggest that metaverse platforms must deliver customer experiences at a very high level to prevent stagnation in metaverse usage intentions; therefore, managers can confidently continue investing in relevant strategies to fuel metaverse platform growth.