VR Shall See

For a growing group of consumers, digital platforms and virtual worlds have become integral to everyday life. While physical stores and conventional online platforms remain popular, millions of consumers are now creating digital identities and "living digital lives" in virtual worlds such as Roblox and Fortnite, interacting with brands in engaging, new and  immersive ways. A significant challenge for marketing is the limited understanding of consumer behavior within digital and virtual spaces, which complicates informed decision-making.

Increasing levels of immersion—defined as the extent to which virtual reality (VR) technologies create a compelling and engaging digital environment that replicates real-world experiences—are expected to significantly influence behavior in virtual service environments. This expectation stems from recent advances in 3D navigation paradigms enabled by modern spatial computing devices such as the Meta Quest Pro and Apple Vision Pro. Technologies such as hand-tracking and eye-tracking have significantly improved virtual consumer experiences. Hand-tracking enables intuitive interaction within virtual spaces, while eye-tracking enables precise targeting and navigation. These technologies foster more immersive VR experiences, increase user engagement, and reduce reliance on physical controllers and keyboards.

The importance of immersion extends beyond just user engagement; it has the potential to revolutionize the shopping experience by creating a sense of presence and reality that traditional online platforms cannot offer. Immersive experiences can lead to deeper emotional connections with products and brands, influencing purchasing decisions in ways that are not yet fully understood. By studying immersion, marketers can uncover new opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty in virtual spaces.

The project's primary objective is to explore the effects of immersion on consumers’ purchasing decisions in virtual digital environments. Therefore, the study will compare traditional controller-based navigation with novel 3D hand-tracking and eye-tracking navigation in a virtual shopping setting.

To study immersion, the project draws on novel navigation paradigms which combine hand-tracking and eye-tracking technologies and thereby enable more natural and immersive interactions with virtual environments, thereby enhancing the user experience and effectiveness of virtual shopping environments.

The project entails an empirical investigation of consumer responses to different levels of immersion in a shopping environment

• Laboratory experiment
• 60 participants (50% female)
• Shopping in VR supermarket
• 2 Between-subjects conditions:
• Controller-based navigation
• Hand- and eye-tracking-based navigation