Virtual Experiences, Real Consequences: How Virtual Reality Transforms Consumer Behavior in E-Commerce

2. Rise Of Vr In E-Commerce

The rise of Virtual Reality (VR) in e-commerce has been an exciting and transformative development in the online shopping landscape. As VR technology has advanced and become more accessible, e-commerce businesses have recognized its potential to redefine the consumer shopping experience and boost sales. Numerous studies have explored how VR can enhance user experience in e-commerce by creating immersive shopping environments (Jiang & Benbasat, 2004; Suh & Lee 2005; Martínez-Navarro et al., 2019; Tawira & Ivanov, 2023). VR allows customers to visualize and interact with products virtually, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction (Park and Kim, 2023). In their study (Barta et al., 2023) found that immersive technologies in online retail led to reduced cognitive effort, and increased purchase intention of consumers. This ultimately leads to improved overall shopping experience.

VR allows consumers to experience products in a more immersive and interactive way (Kim et al., 2021). Instead of relying solely on static images and text descriptions, shoppers can virtually interact with product. They can view them from different angles, and get a more realistic sense of size, scale, and features. This improved visualization leads to better and informed purchase decisions. In e- commerce set-up where the shopping is undertaken in an individual level i.e., without any human assistance, the scrutiny of every element is of utmost importance for avoiding the decision regret. Unlike in traditional retail setup, where a consumer is accompanied by different sales assistants that act as decision support to them, here the purchase decision are individual and hence bit difficult. VR, hence even helps in overcoming some of the limitations of traditional e-commerce. For example, VR experiences in the fashion industry enables customers to virtually try products on them (Chen et al., 2023), reducing the need for returns and exchanges.