Stakeholder Strategy and Design Alignment Framework for Design Science Research – A Study in the Context of VR-Aided Marketing and Sales

Abstract

This study introduces a framework to align various perceptions and objectives that different stakeholders have at the beginning of a Design Science Research (DSR) process and consolidate them into stakeholders' strategies and theory-ingrained design artifacts. We coin this framework as Stakeholder Strategy and Design Alignment (SSDA). As an application area, we concentrate on a Virtual Reality (VR) application designed for marketing and sales purposes. The empirical testing of the framework shows that the marketing and sales potential of the application are, indeed, perceived very differently among three stakeholder groups: company representatives, developers and customers. In addition to the introduction of a new DSR framework, the study sheds light to the applicability of VR technologies for marketing and sales use.