The use of virtual tours to stimulate consumers’ buying and visit intentions: an application to the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the use of virtual tours may represent a lever to improve customers’ intention to buy food products and/or visit places where products are manufactured. Emerging virtual reality and augmented reality can allow people to interact with products and places where products are produced even from very distant places, with a positive impact on their purchase intentions. Applying the theory of planned behaviour, this study focuses on the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, one of the most exported Italian foods. A sample of consumers was surveyed online to explore the role of virtually visiting the food production place on consumers’ intention to physically visit the production place and on their intention to buy the food. The empirical results deriving from a structural equation model developed on 399 completed and valid questionnaires indicate that the opportunity to experience products through virtual tours positively influences consumer behaviours. Young males show the highest intention to physically visit the food production place and to buy the cheese. Findings provide new insights for the emerging literature on the use of virtual reality to experience products through virtual interaction and the impact that interactive technologies have on consumer purchase intentions. Local areas can use virtual tours to improve food tourism and stimulate food product sales. To our knowledge, this paper represents one of the first empirical endeavours aimed at exploring the impact of virtual tours on consumers’ buying and visiting intentions when a food product and a dairy are concerned.

Experiencing a Food Production Site Using Wearable Devices: The Indirect Impact of Immersion and Presence in VR Tours

“…When applied to a food production site, VTs allow customers to improve their food product knowledge, by the means of the virtual visit to the production site and, accordingly, they can also play a fundamental role in attracting tourists to food destinations and their neighboring areas. The latter has been found true in the context of a hypothetical virtual tour to a dairy [21]. However, recent previous studies provide only preliminary indications of the potential visit proneness of the participants, lacking a wider understanding of the phenomenon, highlighting the need for further studies.…”

“…To reduce response bias, we shuffled the order of items by respondents [71]. Specifically, we measured the intention to visit the Parmigiano Reggiano production site using a three-item scale derived by De Canio et al [21], Papagiannidis et al [72], and Fiore et al [38]. We used a four-item scale derived by Jung et al [73] and Han et al [67] to measure VR tour satisfaction (4 items).…”

“…Emerging studies are exploring how to allow people to virtually visit a food production site, and to achieve a deep knowledge of food's origins and production processes remotely could involve food tourism [20,21]. When applied to a food production site, VTs allow customers to improve their food product knowledge, by the means of the virtual visit to the production site and, accordingly, they can also play a fundamental role in attracting tourists to food destinations and their neighboring areas.…”

Antecedents from Tourist's Visit Intention to Spiritual Tourism Destinations in Bali

“…Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) was adopted in this study as the theoretical basis for model development because it is believed to provide a credible basis for testing individual acceptance of new technologies. Theory of planned behavior is also another framework that has been researched to test user intentions using virtual technologies ( Kwok et al 2021;De Canio et al ., 2021) . Based on this state of the art , researchers want to develop a model that integrates SOR and TPB as a model for developing spiritual-virtual tourism in Bali.…”

“…Stimulus organism-response (SOR) theory is one of the most widely used frameworks for researching virtual worlds (Kim et al, 2020;Ming et al, 2021;Qin et al, 2021) but this SOR theory only looks at the point of view of in terms of cognitive and affective responses to the use of virtual tours , so other variables are needed to enrich this model. Apart from SOR theory, theory of planned behavior (TPB) is also another framework that has been studied to test users' intentions to use virtual technology, but the number is still small by Kwok et al (2021) andDe Canio et al . (2021).…”