The Influences of Virtual Reality Shopping Characteristics on Consumers’ Impulse Buying Behavior

Abstract

With the rapid development of virtual reality (VR) hardware devices and virtual technologies, VR applications in retailing are increasingly becoming an inevitable trend of future shopping, particularly essential to the “metaverses” in the digitalization 4.0 era. Thanks to its superiority over traditional e-commerce, virtual stores can provide highly interactive and immersive sensory shopping experiences to system users or end customers. Todays, both retailers and scholars, pay much attention to impulse buying behavior. Nevertheless, this domain remains unaddressed in the context of virtual commerce. Drawing upon the Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm, this article investigates the effectiveness of VR shopping platform factors, namely interactivity and vividness, that impacts consumers’ internal stages (telepresence, perceived diagnosticity, and playfulness) and lead to the urge to buy impulsively in virtual shopping stores. A full 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design experiment was conducted with 227 participants. The empirical results show that interactivity and vividness positively impact telepresence, perceived diagnosticity, and playfulness, which trigger consumers' urge to buy impulsively. Furthermore, the role of the impulsiveness trait in driving the urge to buy impulsively was further explicitly investigated in the VR environment. Detailed discussions and future research directions were also provided.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/virtual-reality-market-101378.

2 Rauschnabel et al. (2022) defined VR in the xReality framework as “Virtual reality is an artificial, virtual, and viewer-centered experience in which the user is enclosed in an all-encompassing 3D space, that is, at least visually—sealed off from the physical environment. VR experiences can lie on a telepresence continuum ranging from atomistic (low) to holistic (high).”

3 Boyd and Koles (2019) defined “Virtual reality incorporates computer-generated, interactive and highly vivid environments that enable the user to achieve a state of immersion through the ultimate experience of telepresence, and facilitate engagements in human encounters that are multi-sensorial, dynamic and resemble the user’s perception and understanding of the real world.”

Additional information

Funding

This study is partially supported by University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City.

Notes on contributors

Jengchung Victor Chen

Jengchung Victor Chen is a Distinguished Professor of the Institute of International Management, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. He received a PhD in CIS from the University of Hawaii, USA. He has published over 70 articles in refereed journals, including IJHCI, JAIS, I&M, DSS, EJIS, CHB, IJEC, and many others.

Quang-An Ha

Quang-An Ha is a lecturer of School of International Business and Marketing, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City. He received a PhD in BA from the Institute of International Management, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. His research have appeared in IJHCI, CHB, JGIMT, B&IT, and many others.

Minh Tam Vu

Minh Tam Vu received MBA degree from Institute of International Management, College of Management, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. His research interests include VR, AR human-computer interaction.