The online appeal of the physical shop: How a physical store can benefit from a virtual representation

Abstract

Consumer behaviour in 2016 shows that (r)etailers need online/offline integration to better serve their clients. An important distinguishing feature of the physical shop is how it can offer consumers a shopping experience. This study uses two experiments to research the extent a fashion store’s shopping experience can be presented to consumers via visual material (a regular photo, a 360-degree photo and a virtual reality photo of the shop) without the consumers being in the shop itself. The effects of these visual materials will also be measured in (among others) terms of purchase intention, visiting intention to the physical shop and online visit satisfaction. A theoretical framework is used to substantiate how the three types of pictures can be classified in terms of medium richness. The completed experiments show, among other outcomes, that consumers who saw the virtual reality photo of the shop have a more positive shopping experience, a higher purchase intention, a higher intention to visit the physical shop and more online visit satisfaction than people who have only seen the regular photo or the 360-degree photo of the shop. Enjoyment and novelty seem to partly explain these found effects.

Exploring consumers’ intent to use smart libraries with technology acceptance model

“…For example, different information technologies would have different "perceived usefulness," while the characteristics of information technology design and operation manuals would affect the user's perception of the technology's ease of use. Perceptual usefulness: Moes and Vliet (2017) believed that potential adopters will see a particular information system as helping them to improve their job performance (such as reducing the time required to complete particular tasks or providing timely information). Perceptual ease of use: Frey and Osborne (2017) held that individuals believed that the degree to which they did not need to work when using a particular system was more positive when the user perceived that the system was easier to learn.…”

Omnichannel in the fashion industry: A qualitative analysis from a supply-side perspective

“…Companies thus need to improve the omnichannel experience. To this respect, authors such as Moes and van Vliet [1] point out that consumer behaviour reveals a need for retailers to integrate channels in order to better serve customers; consumers naturally combine these channels, while retailers are still analysing how to integrate them, indicating that omnichannel via is the best to obtain these objectives. Against this background, this study focuses on the fashion industry, since fashion has become one of the most important sectors of the world economy, a key element in the international financial markets, and a distinctive tool of contemporary cultural movements.…”

“…In fact, omnichannel already accounts for 40% of purchases in the sector. 1 In Spain, the fashion industry is considered strategic because it is a dynamic sector that translates into growth in exports and job creation, and accounts for one of the largest shares of the national economy (Gross Domestic Product, GDP) according to the ISEM Fashion Business School. In the case of GDP, the share of the fashion industry in the Spanish economy remains steady despite the growth of the economy as a whole, according to the Economic Report on Fashion in Spain 2017, prepared by Modaes.es and the Center for Textile Information and Clothing.…”

Exploiting fashion x-commerce through the empowerment of voice in the fashion virtual reality arena

“…Such a survey provides us with a valuable tool that may be put to good use to place our present work in the current panorama and to foresee its possible future extensions. Our contribution amounts to one out of the two that have so far explored the usage of a voice input (Morotti et al 2020;Speicher et al 2017), two out of the 12 concerned with clothing (Morotti et al 2020;Speicher et al 2017;Dzardanova et al 2017;Jang et al 2019;Kapusy et al 2017;Wong Lau and Lee 2019;Lau et al 2014;Moes and van Vliet 2017;Park et al 2018;Zhang et al 2014;Huiyue et al 2019;Bigne et al 2016;Ketelaar et al 2018;Martínez-Navarro et al 2019;Zhao et al 2017;Wölfel and Reinhardt 2019), one of the three involving a specific social-related factors as the inclusion of a sales assistant (Dzardanova et al 2017;Zhao et al 2017;Morotti et al 2020), and the only one integrating a voice assistant in VR shopping Morotti et al (2020).…”