Augmented reality attributes and value co-creation in Pakistan's fashion retail sector

Augmented reality (AR) is increasingly used in fashion retail to enhance customer experiences and facilitate interactive product engagement. However, limited evidence explains how specific attributes of AR experiences are associated with value co-creation and subsequent consumer responses in emerging markets. This study examines the associations between six AR experience attributes—immersion, aesthetic appeal, creative thinking, telepresence, connectedness, and commercial personalisation—and value co-creation in Pakistan’s fashion retail context. It further examines the relationships between value co-creation and behavioural intention and between behavioural intention and purchase intention. Data were collected from 216 consumers with prior experience using AR applications in fashion retail and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Commercial personalisation, connectedness, creative thinking, and immersion were positively associated with value co-creation, whereas aesthetic appeal and telepresence were not statistically significant. Value co-creation was positively associated with behavioural intention, which in turn was positively associated with purchase intention. The specific indirect-effect results indicated that commercial personalisation, creative thinking, and immersion were associated with purchase intention through the theoretically proposed sequence involving value co-creation and behavioural intention. These findings provide preliminary attribute-level evidence that personalised, cognitively engaging, relational, and immersive AR experiences are associated with stronger perceptions of value co-creation among fashion consumers in Pakistan. The results should be interpreted with caution because the cross-sectional design does not establish definitive causality, and discriminant validity was not demonstrated for all construct pairs.