Virtual Store Experience: Will it increase the intention to visit the physical store or make a purchase?

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic challenges retail players to provide customers with an omnichannel shopping experience. Even though online retail shopping seems very promising, research have found that offline store is still needed to increase brand awareness and visit intention. Prior research has shown that virtual tours are effective at encouraging visit intention. However, they have not been proven for purchase intention. Brand equity was expected to mediate the relationship between store brand experience, visit intention, and purchase intention when the positive affective response was also expected to mediate for purchase intention. A total of 216 users who experienced the IKEA virtual store experience interface were used as respondents. The data collected were processed using SEM. Results showed that store brand experience positively impacts visit intention and purchase intention directly and indirectly with brand equity as a mediate variable. This study also reveals that in this case, higher visit intention are influenced by higher brand equity. Furthermore, this VR experience drives a more positive affective response which in returns creates higher purchase intention. This VR technology is recommended to bring back traffic post pandemic since it is easy to use and can be used by anyone anywhere.