De Angelis, Matteo

Pozharliev, Rumen

Rossi, Dario

English

Archivio della ricerca- LUISS Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli di Roma

1/7/2021 Luiss Open » Augmented Reality Makes Me Feel So Excited: Evidence from Physiological and Self-Reported Measures » Printhttps://open.luiss.it/en/2020/05/13/augmented-reality-makes-me-feel-so-excited-evidence-from-physiological-and-self-reported-measures/print/ 1/2- Luiss Open - https://open.luiss.it/en -Augmented Reality Makes Me Feel So Excited: Evidencefrom Physiological and Self-Reported MeasuresThe market for augmented reality, which can be defined as the integration of digitally createdmedia within an existing real environment, is projected to increase from roughly 5.91 billion in2018 to more than 198 billion in 2025 (Statista, 2019). Companies around the world have beengrowingly using AR as an advertising tool to showcase the products and services they sell in theirretail stores. Examples of AR applications that might simplify consumers’ decision making areIkea Place, that enables customers to place the company’s furniture wherever they imagine it intheir homes (Joseph, 2017) and Shopify AR, that allows customers to remotely explore everypart and every angle of their products (Beachamp, 2018). Despite the growing application ofaugmented reality in advertising, there is limited understanding about how customers experiencetheir interaction with the augmented reality and how it differs from a traditional advertising (e.g.standard paper-based advertising).While a few studies have demonstrated a positive attitude of customers toward AR advertising(Yaoyuneyong et al., 2016), sufficient empirical evidence proving the ability of AR to engagecustomers above and beyond traditional 2D advertising and the processes that underliecustomers’ enhanced experience with AR is lacking (Javornik, 2016). Obtaining this knowledge isvery important as it would offer scientific support to companies’ growing interest to invest in AR.Aiming to fill this gap, this article studies the physiological responses to and actual and postexperiences with AR in order to offer relevant insights about customers’ experience with ARadvertising. The study predicts that customers will show enhanced physiological responses andself-reported experiences when exposed to AR versus tradition 2D advertising, and this will inturn lead to an enhanced willingness to buy for the advertised products. This study offers twoexperiments, conducted on an online platform typically used to recruit participants in behavioralstudies (i.e., Amazon Mechanical Turk) and one laboratory experiment to test its hypotheses.In particular, Study 1 (online experiment) analyses how traditional advertising and ARadvertising influence the Willingness to Buy (WTB) of a customer. For both of the experimentalconditions (traditional vs AR communication) we used three different furniture from the IKEAcatalogue (SANDBACKEN sofa, KVISTBRO basket, MICKE desk). In the traditional advertisingcondition each product has been shown as page of catalogue on a computer screen, while in theAR condition each product has been presented through a video of the products selected in theIKEA Place application. The results of Study 1 show that the use of AR leads to a higher WTBcompared to traditional advertising. The effect of AR (vs. traditional) advertising on WTB ismediated by the perceived novelty and by the customer engagement with the communicationtool. Specifically, AR compared to traditional advertising, leads to higher perceived novelty andcustomer engagement, resulting in higher customers’ willingness to buy the product experiencedin the AR.1/7/2021 Luiss Open » Augmented Reality Makes Me Feel So Excited: Evidence from Physiological and Self-Reported Measures » Printhttps://open.luiss.it/en/2020/05/13/augmented-reality-makes-me-feel-so-excited-evidence-from-physiological-and-self-reported-measures/print/ 2/2Using the experimental protocol of Study 1, Study 2 shows that the effect occurred in Study 1 ismoderated by customers’ score on neuroticism, a personality trait related to emotionalregulation, whereby individuals scoring high on neuroticism tend to be more emotionallyreactive, especially under stress. In particular, results of Study 2 demonstrate that the positiveeffect of perceived novelty on customer engagement with AR, in turn, on consumers’ willingnessto buy the product shown in the AR is more likely to occur for customers who are relatively low,rather than high, on neuroticism.Moreover, Study 3 (lab experiment) allowed participants to interacted with the advertising usingan iPhone 6S. In the traditional advertising condition each product has been shown as the pageof the catalogue on the screen of the smartphone, while in the AR condition each product hasbeen presented through the IKEA Place application that allowed participants to project thefurniture in the surrounding space and to rotate and shift it at will. The results of Study 3 showthat the effect of novelty on willingness to buy (Study 1 and 2) can be explained by customers’physiological arousal, derived from galvanic skin responses measures, whereby the increase inperceived novelty caused by the AR is producing higher unconscious emotional response which inturn results in higher customers’ willingness to buy.Overall, this study suggests marketing managers to use AR to increase their customers’unconscious emotional responses and conscious experiences, thereby improving customers’willingness to buy the advertised product. Moreover, our findings indicate that replacingtraditional ads with augmented reality ones enhances customer experience and willingness tobuy for customers scoring low on neuroticism, with possible implications on customersegmentation and marketing communication. Finally, our physiological results suggest thatconsumer neuroscience methods and measures can add value to traditional research that seeksto predict advertising effectiveness.Article printed from Luiss Open: https://open.luiss.it/enURL to article: https://open.luiss.it/en/2020/05/13/augmented-reality-makes-me-feel-so-excited-evidence-from-physiological-and-self-reported-measures/Copyright © 2020 Luiss Open. All rights reserved.

Augmented Reality Makes Me Feel So Excited: Evidence from Physiological and Self-Reported Measures

https://iris.luiss.it/bitstream/11385/208219/2/Augmented%20Reality%20Makes%20Me%20Feel%20So%20Excited_%c2%a0Evidence%20from%20Physiological%20and%20Self-Reported%20Measures.pdf

Augmented Reality Makes Me Feel So Excited: Evidence from Physiological and Self-Reported Measures

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Archivio della ricerca- LUISS Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli di Roma