Augmented Reality adoption maturity among online shoppers: Segmentation and Purchase Implications

The Augmented Reality (AR) in retail research modelled on the consumers using variance-based path models, ignoring AR shoppers underexplored. This study segments 1,116 online shoppers with prior AR experience based on their perceptions and their engagement with AR attributes, links the segment to purchase decision. Two step clustering processes (Ward’s minimum variance linkage clustering followed by k-means): AR-Hesitant (28.1%), AR-Pragmatic Mainstream (43.9%), and AR-Enthusiastic (28%). The clusters differed significantly on every AR dimension and Purchase decision, having larger effect of η² =.40 for purchase readiness; increasing the mean purchase decision from 3.03 to 3.62 to 4.21 across hesitant to the enthusiastic segment on 5-point scale. The segment affiliation was significantly associated with the usage frequency of AR, not related to household income, gender, education, or devices used. These findings indicate that purchase readiness is developed through exposure and regular use than through income. Implying that retailers prioritise repeated, low-friction AR exposure over targeting income based online shoppers and consumers. The Unique contribution of the study is one of the first largest sample of Indian online shoppers, person centric segmentation in emerging markets, reframing uniform average effect of AR response to sequence based of adoption-maturity stages.