This paper conceptualizes immersive experience as a service phenomenon that arises from the alignment of service design (concept, spatial, and interactive design) and psychological engagement and is manifested in contemporary entertainment settings, sports events, retail, and hospitality spaces. Building on this conceptualization, the paper develops a theoretical framework showing how continuous alignment between service design and participants’ psychological processes is dynamically achieved at service delivery in these environments. From the provider side, immersive experiences are curated, technology-mediated, and entertainment-oriented; from the participant side, they elicit patterns of sensory arousal, emotional resonance, and imaginative involvement that evolve in real time as the experience unfolds. At their intersection, immersion emerges as dynamically co-created and characterized by personalized journeys, collaborative sense-making, temporal integration, and value-in-context. Theoretically, the paper advances service research by linking design affordances, alignment, and psychological engagement as mechanisms that explain how immersive experiences emerge and create value. Managerially, the framework suggests service-delivery levers and individual regulatory processes for balancing sensory, affective, and cognitive tensions.
Schmitt et al. (Wed,) studied this question.