The impact of experiential augmented reality applications on fashion purchase intention

Purpose Utilizing the stimulus-organism-response model, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of augmented reality (AR) (specifically augmentation) on consumers’ affective and behavioral response and to assess whether consumers’ hedonic motivation for shopping moderates this relationship. Design/methodology/approach An experiment using the manipulation of AR and no AR was conducted with 162 participants aged between 18 and 35. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling and randomly assigned to the control or stimulus group. The hypothesized associations were analyzed using linear regression with bootstrapping. Findings The paper demonstrates the benefit of using an experiential AR retail application (app) to positively impact purchase intention. The results show that this effect is mediated by positive affective response. Furthermore, hedonic shopping motivation moderates the relationship between augmentation and the positive affective response. Research limitations/implications Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalizability to other forms of augmentation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed model using different types of AR stimuli. Furthermore, replication of the study with other populations would increase the generalizability of the findings. Practical implications Results of this study provide a valuable reference for retailers of the benefits of using AR when attempting to optimize experiential value in online environments. Originality/value The study contributes to experiential retail and consumer purchase behavior research by deepening the conceptualization of the impact of experiential technologies, more specifically AR apps, by considering the role of hedonic shopping motivations.