The Impact of Experiential Augmented Reality Applications on Fashion Purchase Intention

Utilizing the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of augmented reality (AR) (specifically augmentation) on consumers’ affective and behavioral response and to assess whether consumers’ hedonic motivation for shopping moderates this relationship. An experiment using the manipulation of AR and no AR was conducted with 162 participants aged between 18 and 35. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling and randomly assigned to the control or stimulus group. The hypothesized associations were analyzed using linear regression with bootstrapping. The paper demonstrates the benefit of using an experiential AR retail application (app) to positively impact purchase intention. The results show this effect is mediated by positive affective response. Furthermore, hedonic shopping motivation moderates the relationship between augmentation and the positive affective response. Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalizability to other forms of augmentation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed model using different types of AR stimuli. Furthermore, replication of the study with other populations would increase the generalizability of the findings. Results of this study provide a valuable reference for retailers of the benefits of using AR when attempting to optimize experiential value in online environments. The study contributes to experiential retail and consumer purchase behavior research by deepening the conceptualization of the impact of experiential technologies, more specifically AR apps, by considering the role of hedonic shopping motivations.Peer reviewe

The Impact of TikTok UGC Videos on Online Purchase Intention: Mediating Role of Cognitive States

Background: User-Generated Content (UGC) videos have received considerable attention in recent years thanks to their great potential for buyers and sellers. However, the effect of this content on consumer behavior remains unclear, especially in the context of developing countries (e.g., Vietnam). By applying the Stimulus-Organism-Response model (S-O-R model), this paper examines the effect of UGC videos on online purchase intention. Moreover, the mediating role of cognitive responses, consisting of perceived credibility, perceived diagnosticity, and mental imagery, is also examined to offer valuable insights to businesses, enabling them to leverage and effectively promote the trends of UGC videos. Method: A convenience sampling method was employed to collect the data. A total of 318 valid respondents participated in this survey. The data was analyzed with the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling method (PLS-SEM). Results: The findings show that UGC videos have a direct impact on online purchase intention. This paper also verified that cognitive states mediate the relationship between stimuli and subsequent behavioral intentions. Conclusion: Our research findings enrich the literature on consumer’s online purchase intentions by applying the S-O-R framework by highlighting the role of cognitive responses, and improving generalizability by contributing additional consumer behavior findings in developing Asian nations. Moreover, this paper offers businesses insights into the formation of customers\u27 purchase intentions while watching UGC videos. Based on that, this paper raises practical recommendations regarding promoting the UGC video trend and creating UGC videos effectively to improve the cognitive states perceived by customers, including credibility, diagnostic value, and mental imagery

Beyond 2D Product Presentation in E-commerce: A Literature Review

Value creation is increasingly relevant for owners of digital service platforms. These owners have two vital goals: increase their service base and sustain their service offerers. A key element in continuously accommodating these goals is value creation. While the literature on digital service platforms is growing, there is a paucity of knowledge on the value creation process in these platforms. Drawing on a qualitative study of Uber drivers in Denmark and Sweden, we synthesize Schumpeter’s theory of value creation to develop an understanding of the value creation process in digital service platforms from the perspective of service offerers. As such, our study proposes and contributes a value creation framework for digital service platforms that identifies 8 value sources and highlights resource combination and exchange in the process of value creation

Affective feedback: an investigation into the role of emotions in the information seeking process

User feedback is considered to be a critical element in the information seeking process, especially in relation to relevance assessment. Current feedback techniques determine content relevance with respect to the cognitive and situational levels of interaction that occurs between the user and the retrieval system. However, apart from real-life problems and information objects, users interact with intentions, motivations and feelings, which can be seen as critical aspects of cognition and decision-making. The study presented in this paper serves as a starting point to the exploration of the role of emotions in the information seeking process. Results show that the latter not only interweave with different physiological, psychological and cognitive processes, but also form distinctive patterns, according to specific task, and according to specific user

Sensory stimuli to influence customer engagement in digital contexts

[EN] Sensory marketing is an opportunity to influence the perception, judgment and behavior of consumers and maximize the profitability of the product. Different brands use stimuli in digital contexts to boost customer engagement. For example, emojis, gifs, stickers, and images that are visually appealing. As auditory stimuli, there are voices, music, playlist, etc. and the rest of the senses, they can integrate digital interfaces that help them better experience the products, such as screens, zoom, or simpler elements such as images or sensory descriptions. This thesis studies sensory stimuli in digital contexts and the influence they have on customer engagement. Moderating variables are integrated into the analysis to better understand how these stimuli influence customers. The results obtained through the different experiments carried out in digital contexts with a sample of consumers and students suggest that the presence of sensory stimuli increases customer engagement in digital contexts and there are different variables that moderate their effectiveness. In the case of visual stimuli (emojis), the type and repetition moderate the relationship, for auditory stimuli, the type of product and the involvement are important variables to consider, while for sensory words related to touch, the consumer's need-for-touch is relevant to understanding how sensory words influence customer response. This thesis contributes to the previous sensory marketing literature by integrating the five senses in digital marketing and three, difficult to replicate on the internet (smell, touch, and taste), in addition to integrating less studied sensory stimuli (for example, emojis, sounds associated with the product, voice-over and sensory words) and integrating less explored digital channels such as emails and blogs. Other contributions are the inclusion of moderating variables when predicting the effects of sensory stimuli, as well as a consistent and complete metric of customer engagement. Finally, the results obtained in this thesis have important practical implications for marketing professionals specialized in digital contexts, brands, software, social networks, websites, and search engines. [ES] El marketing sensorial es una oportunidad para influir en la percepción, juicio y comportamiento de los consumidores y maximizar la rentabilidad del producto. Diferentes marcas utilizan estímulos en contextos digitales para impulsar el compromiso del consumidor. Por ejemplo, emojis, gifs, stickers e imágenes que son atractivos visuales. Como estímulos auditivos hay voces, música, playlist, etc. y para el resto de sentidos pueden integrar interfaces digitales que los ayuden a experimentar mejor los productos, como pueden ser pantallas, zoom o elementos más simples como imágenes o descripciones sensoriales. Esta tesis estudia los estímulos sensoriales en contextos digitales y la influencia que tienen en el compromiso del consumidor. Se integran al análisis variables moderadoras que ayudan a comprender mejor cómo influyen estos estímulos en el consumidor. Los resultados obtenidos a través de los diferentes experimentos realizados en contextos digitales con muestra de consumidores y estudiantes, sugieren que la presencia de estímulos sensoriales incrementa el compromiso del consumidor en contextos digitales y hay diferentes variables que moderan la relación. En el caso de los estímulos visuales (emojis), el tipo y la repetición moderan la relación, para los estímulos auditivos, el tipo de producto y la implicación son variables importantes a considerar, mientras que para las palabras sensoriales relacionadas con el tacto, la necesidad de tocar del consumidor es relevante para entender cómo influyen las palabras sensoriales en la respuesta de los consumidores. Esta tesis contribuye a la literatura previa del marketing sensorial al integrar los cinco sentidos en marketing digital y tres, difíciles de replicar en internet (olfato, tacto y gusto), además de integrar estímulos sensoriales menos estudiados (por ejemplo, emojis, sonidos asociados al producto, voz en off y palabras sensoriales) e integrando canales digitales menos explorados, como correos electrónicos y blogs. Otras aportaciones son la inclusión de variables moderadoras a la hora de predecir los efectos de los estímulos sensoriales, así como una métrica congruente y completa del compromiso del cliente. Finalmente, los resultados obtenidos en esta tesis tienen imporantes implicaciones prácticas para los profesionales de marketing especializados en contextos digitales, marcas, softwares, redes sociales, websites y motores de búsqueda

Affect-based information retrieval

One of the main challenges Information Retrieval (IR) systems face nowadays originates from the semantic gap problem: the semantic difference between a user’s query representation and the internal representation of an information item in a collection. The gap is further widened when the user is driven by an ill-defined information need, often the result of an anomaly in his/her current state of knowledge. The formulated search queries, which are submitted to the retrieval systems to locate relevant items, produce poor results that do not address the users’ information needs. To deal with information need uncertainty IR systems have employed in the past a range of feedback techniques, which vary from explicit to implicit. The first category of feedback techniques necessitates the communication of explicit relevance judgments, in return for better query reformulations and recommendations of relevant results. However, the latter happens at the expense of users’ cognitive resources and, furthermore, introduces an additional layer of complexity to the search process. On the other hand, implicit feedback techniques make inferences on what is relevant based on observations of user search behaviour. By doing so, they disengage users from the cognitive burden of document rating and relevance assessments. However, both categories of RF techniques determine topical relevance with respect to the cognitive and situational levels of interaction, failing to acknowledge the importance of emotions in cognition and decision making. In this thesis I investigate the role of emotions in the information seeking process and develop affective feedback techniques for interactive IR. This novel feedback framework aims to aid the search process and facilitate a more natural and meaningful interaction. I develop affective models that determine topical relevance based on information gathered from various sensory channels, and enhance their performance using personalisation techniques. Furthermore, I present an operational video retrieval system that employs affective feedback to enrich user profiles and offers meaningful recommendations of unseen videos. The use of affective feedback as a surrogate for the information need is formalised as the Affective Model of Browsing. This is a cognitive model that motivates the use of evidence extracted from the psycho-somatic mobilisation that occurs during cognitive appraisal. Finally, I address some of the ethical and privacy issues that arise from the social-emotional interaction between users and computer systems. This study involves questionnaire data gathered over three user studies, from 74 participants of different educational background, ethnicity and search experience. The results show that affective feedback is a promising area of research and it can improve many aspects of the information seeking process, such as indexing, ranking and recommendation. Eventually, it may be that relevance inferences obtained from affective models will provide a more robust and personalised form of feedback, which will allow us to deal more effectively with issues such as the semantic gap