Immersion as a Powerful Marketing Weapon: the Applications of Immersive Technologies with the Focus on Vr, Ar and Mr(2/2)

The immersive technology, mainly virtual reality (VR), augmented reality(AR), and mixed reality (MR) has been developed for more than 20 yearsand applied in various industries. The current technological improvementhas driven it to develop faster and become more mature. Because of itsadvanced development, more industries have applied it in practice, inparticular in gaming and medical fields. Academia has also paidattentions and assessed its applicability in these fields. However,there is relatively less attention in the marketing scholarly field.While existing limited studies are descriptive or discuss the perceivedvalue and usefulness (e.g., Durl, 2017; Javornik, 2016; Tian, 2014; Yimand Ahn, 2014), two articles have pioneered the research from the natureof the immersive technology, such as tele-presence, immersion, avataretc. (Charfi, 2014; Hilken et al., 2017). There is thus a call for morestudies to provide better insights into the applications andapplicability of the immersive technology in marketing. In the current2-year-long proposal, since the immersion technology has been in itsfast moving stage, in the first year, the author attempts to provide areview of the current applications and the ways of VR, AR and MR inmarketing, while consumer acceptance of these technologies will beexplored as well. In the second year, the influential mechanism ofimmersion such as its driving forces of immersion (and maybe the othercharacteristics of the immersive technology such as space presence andfeeling/effect of avatar as well) and its effectiveness in arousingconsumer consumption emotion will be investigated. Unlike traditionalways of analysis, this project considers the studied relationships ascurvilinear. Also, various types of the immersion technology will beregarded as contingent conditions, thereby, providing deeperunderstanding of the studied immersion subject.