The influence of flow experience in the augmented reality context on psychological ownership

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) technology shows great potential for marketers and simultaneously puts forward a challenge for established marketing practice. This paper explores the driving factors of flow experience in the AR shopping environment, and how this relationship affects consumers’ psychological ownership. The research also examines the moderating role of brand attachment in the relationship between flow experience and its antecedents. A Likert-type survey was used to explore 527 customers’ experiences of using a virtual try-on AR application in Zara’s physical stores in Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, Changsha, and Guangzhou. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the hypothesized relationships among all variables. The results illustrate that perceived informativeness, perceived aesthetics, perceived novelty, and parasocial relationship positively affect consumers’ flow experience, which in turn positively influences psychological ownership. Flow experience partially mediates the relationships between consumer perceptions and psychological ownership. Brand attachment acts as a moderator on the relationships between consumer perceptions and flow experience. Moreover, brand attachment is proposed to interact with customer perceptions and psychological ownership through the mediation of flow experience.

Keywords:

• Augmented reality
• flow experience
• psychological ownership
• brand attachment
• parasocial relationship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71702049); this research was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Grant (2018M630816; 2020M682287). This work was also partially supported by the Cultivation Program for Innovative Team of Philosophy and Social Science of Henan University (2019CXTD008).

Notes on contributors

Chunlin Yuan

Chunlin Yuan is an Associate Professor at Henan University. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing at Changwon National University, South Korea. His research interests include social media marketing and supply chain management. His research has been published in the Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Industrial Management & Data Systems, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, and other journals.

Shuman Wang

Shuman Wang is from Business School of Henan University. Her research interests include social media marketing and advertising. Her research has been published in the Journal of Business research, Industrial Marketing Management, and Industrial Management & Data Systems.

Xiaolei Yu

Xiaolei Yu is an Associate Professor at Henan University. She earned her Ph.D. from Changwon National University, South Korea. Her research interests include social media marketing and advertising. Her work has been published in Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, and Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.

Kyung Hoon Kim

Kyung Hoon Kim is a Professor of Marketing at Changwon National University. His primary research interests are marketing strategy, advertising, and relationship marketing. He has published in several journals, including Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, International Marketing Review, and other journals.

Hakil Moon

Hakil Moon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing from the Washington State University. His primary research interests are innovation, new product design research, and interfirm relationship. His research has been published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, and other journals.