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Consumer purchasing online is considered, with interactivity highlighted as a critical end-user issue. Levels of user interactivity up to and including virtual reality environments are now realistic in e-tailing. Conceptualizing interactivity to recognize the relevance of perceptions to consumer engagement motivates a focus on the user interface. Aspects relating to trust, usability and involvement are identified, and examined in a series of linked studies focusing on hedonic and high-involvement products, particularly surfboards. Preliminary studies across a range of businesses and products indicated consumer willingness to purchase hedonic products online, but many businesses imposed a high workload on online purchasers. Despite successful web marketing of hedonic products such as CDs, we found that no contemporary providers of customized surfboards offered finished product e-tailing, nor used virtual reality technology to demonstrate performance. A real case study of online swimwear purchase demonstrated an improved purchase process. “Beachtown”, a virtual reality e-tailing environment related to a coastal tourism economy allowed further examination of apparel, surfboard and holiday purchase. Results indicate that an enhanced interactive virtual environment increases end user involvement and willingness to purchase.
Gammack et al. (Wed,) studied this question.