TY - JOUR
T1 - Let Me Imagine That for You
T2 - Transforming the Retail Frontline Through Augmenting Customer Mental Imagery Ability
AU - Heller, Jonas
AU - Chylinski, Mathew
AU - de Ruyter, Ko
AU - Mahr, Dominik
AU - Keeling, Debbie I.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 New York University
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The rapid development of augmented reality (AR) is reshaping retail frontline operations by enhancing the offline and online customer experience. Drawing on mental imagery theory, this paper develops a conceptual framework to reflect how AR emulates customer's cognitive processes offloading those to the technology. Consequently, the AR-enabled frontline improves decision comfort, motivates positive WOM and facilitates choice of higher value products. The underlying mechanism is a sequential mediation via improved processing fluency and decision comfort. The findings also demonstrate boundary conditions of customers’ visual processing styles and product contextuality. Object-visualisers benefit more from AR induced imagery processes, and the effect of processing fluency on customer decision comfort is moderated by product contextuality. The results are verified with repeat studies to control for novelty of AR, and a field study that highlights the impact of AR on customers’ choice and spending. We discuss implications for theory and practice of AR-enabled frontline retailing.
AB - The rapid development of augmented reality (AR) is reshaping retail frontline operations by enhancing the offline and online customer experience. Drawing on mental imagery theory, this paper develops a conceptual framework to reflect how AR emulates customer's cognitive processes offloading those to the technology. Consequently, the AR-enabled frontline improves decision comfort, motivates positive WOM and facilitates choice of higher value products. The underlying mechanism is a sequential mediation via improved processing fluency and decision comfort. The findings also demonstrate boundary conditions of customers’ visual processing styles and product contextuality. Object-visualisers benefit more from AR induced imagery processes, and the effect of processing fluency on customer decision comfort is moderated by product contextuality. The results are verified with repeat studies to control for novelty of AR, and a field study that highlights the impact of AR on customers’ choice and spending. We discuss implications for theory and practice of AR-enabled frontline retailing.
KW - 512 Business and Management
KW - Augmented reality
KW - Customer frontline experience
KW - Mental imagery
KW - Processing fluency
KW - Word-of-mouth intentions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85064232445&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jretai.2019.03.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jretai.2019.03.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85064232445
SN - 0022-4359
VL - 95
SP - 94
EP - 114
JO - Journal of Retailing
JF - Journal of Retailing
IS - 2
ER -