Virtual Terroir and the Premium Coffee Experience

Abstract

With its origin-centric value proposition, the specialty coffee industry seeks to educate consumers about the value of the origin of coffee and how the relationship with farmers ensures quality and makes coffee a premium product. While the industry has widely used stories and visual cues to communicate this added value, research studying whether and how these efforts influence consumers' experiences is scarce. Through three experiments, we explored the effect of images that evoke the terroir of coffee on the perception of premiumness. Our results revealed that online images that resembled the broad origin of coffee (i.e., a farm) could influence premiumness expectations of coffee (Experiment 1). Similarly, a virtual reality environment that depicted this broad origin (vs. a control but not a city atmosphere) could enhance the perception of coffee premiumness for non-expert consumers (Experiment 2) and the enjoyment of the experience for coffee professionals (Experiment 3). Importantly, we found that congruence between the coffee and the virtual reality (VR) atmospheres mediated how much non-experts enjoyed the experience (Experiment 2). VR atmospheres also influenced expectations of sweetness and acidity for non-experts (Experiment 2). These findings serve as a steppingstone for further exploration of the effects of congruence between visual cues and product/brand attributes on premiumness expectations and perception, and more generally on consumer experience. From a practical standpoint, this study provides insights into key aspects for the development of immersive virtual product experiences.

Customer Engagement in Multi-Sensory Virtual Reality Advertising: The Effect of Sound and Scent Congruence

“…In previous research the smell of coffee has also unexpectedly been found more congruent to certain visual stimuli as intended (cf. Barbosa Escobar et al, 2021 ). Thorough pre-testing of stimuli before conducting further elaborate experiments is therefore advisable.…”

“… Loureiro et al, 2021 ) and the “post-purchase stage” which concerns consumption of and engagement with the product/brand and after sales service (cf. Liu et al, 2019 ; Barbosa Escobar et al, 2021 ). Also noteworthy is the conceptual framework provided by Hollebeek et al (2020) on the role of VR in marketing throughout the customer journey, where they distinguish between the pre-, the intra- and the post-VR experience and provide a useful classification of VR archetypes, formats and content features, calling for more research in this domain.…”

Perspectives on Multisensory Human-Food Interaction

“…The majority of XR eating research has focused, so far, on real scenarios obeying the laws of physics (quadrant 1). Using VR, for example, studies have explored drinking coffee while immersed in a coffee farm (Barbosa Escobar et al, 2021). Using stereoscopic AR interfaces, other studies have investigated altering the luminance distribution of a slice of cake and changing the apparent size of a cookie .…”

Impossible (Food) Experiences in Extended Reality

“…The majority of XR eating research has focused, so far, on real scenarios obeying the laws of physics (quadrant 1). Using VR, for example, studies have explored drinking coffee while immersed in a coffee farm (Barbosa Escobar et al, 2021). Using stereoscopic AR interfaces, other studies have investigated altering the luminance distribution of a slice of cake (Ueda et al, 2020) and changing the apparent size of a cookie (Narumi et al, 2012).…”