Abstract
The global pandemic of COVID-19 pushed the technological barriers and forced both retailers and potential customers to seek new ways of mutual interaction. Even though considered as mostly exclusive to the gaming industry, virtual reality has been gaining more interest outside its original niche. However, it is not clear how this new technology is going to be accepted by average customers in e-retail. This chapter focuses on defining the concept of virtual reality and providing an overview of aspects associated with virtual immersion. Further, the effects of virtual immersion are examined on a group of university students and put in a perspective with their intention to use this technology for shopping purposes in the future. The main emphasis is put on the comparison of hedonic and utilitarian factors of virtual reality adoption in e-retail.
TopSpecifics Of Virtual Reality According To The User Approach And Its Implications
While the technical approach to virtual reality highlights the importance of immersive devices and their ability to transmit sensory information to the user, hence the concept of technical immersion, the user approach to virtual reality highlights the user's contribution to their virtual reality experience. This contribution is essential because, according to Steuer (1992, p. 4):
(...) a device- driven definition of virtual reality is unacceptable: It fails to provide any insight into the processes or effects of using these systems, fails to provide a conceptual framework from which to make regulatory decisions, fails to provide an aesthetic from which to create media products, and fails to provide a method for consumers to rely on their experiences with other media in understanding the nature of virtual reality.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Virtual Vivacity: Vivacity is made up of two subdimensions: sensory breadth and sensory depth. Sensory breadth makes the environment livelier when it calls for a maximum of meaning from the internet user. It is thus based on the sensory richness of the medium. It is especially marked by the strong presence of visual factors through images, colors and graphics and auditory factors through audio, video, and animation.
Virtual Immersion: Immersion is one of the main characteristics of the online experience. A good level of technical immersion, which is obtained thanks to immersive technologies, can manage to partially or totally cut off the user's perception of his or her real environment so that he or she only perceives the stimuli of the virtual world.
Virtual Presence: Presence is assimilated to a psychological state in which the virtuality of the experience is not perceived.
Immersive Technology: The role of immersive technology is to create and shape the user's experience in the virtual world. The user should not be passive since he or she undertakes a number of actions and interactions contributing to the construction of experience.
Perception: Perception in its classic sensory definition makes it possible to convey a mode of representation of the environment and of knowledge of it with sensory receptors.
Virtual Reality: In virtual reality, one or more human users can perceive and act in an immersive, pseudonatural way and in real time in a digital environment, called a virtual environment. This virtual environment can be a copy of reality but also a simulation of some of its aspects, a symbolic representation.
Webmospheric: The concept of webmospherics refers to the intentional design of web environments to create positive effects (cognitions or positive affects) in their users to increase favorable responses from consumers (revisit site, exploration, etc.).