Shopping with Virtual Hands

Abstract

Retailers can use virtual reality as a new touchpoint for their customers: within an existent channel or as a new sales channel. Thus, it is crucial to understand the differences and similarities between the physical and the virtual shopping environment. Shopping simulations make it possible to test, observe, and collect data in a controlled, low-cost, and fast way compared to field experiments. However, past studies might have provided biased results due to the characteristics of the sample used. This study analyzes how consumers behave in two virtual shopping tasks. The exploratory, experimental research uses an immersive VR shopping environment and a sample of participants balanced across demographic characteristics and previous experience with VR. Moreover, it uses both self-reported and implicit metrics gathered through eye- and hand-tracking system. The findings demonstrate the value of having those two sources of metrics to better understand consumer shopping behavior in a virtual reality setting.