When technology imitates life: how immersive technologies influence consumer judgments and behaviors

Immersive technologies have generated enormous industry investment and buzz, and marketers are beginning to embrace these technologies in hopes of transforming the customer experience. However, limited research has empirically explored how these nascent immersive technologies might actually influence consumers’ judgments and behaviors. This dissertation aims to address this gap by exploring consumer responses to two distinct immersive technologies: Augmented Reality (AR) and Dynamic Audio. First, this dissertation investigates the consequences of presenting food objects in AR. Across four empirical studies (presented in Chapters 3-6), we find that AR’s unique ability to visually superimpose objects into consumers’ real-time environments increases their ability to mentally simulate consuming a pictured food, which increases their desire and purchase likelihood for the food. Further, we find the increased mental simulation produced by AR is itself preceded and driven by increased personal relevance for the food items. Importantly, we find this effect manifests on both large (e.g., tablets) and small (e.g., smartphones) mobile devices, and holds across multiple food categories (including indulgent, non-indulgent, desirable, and undesirable foods). Next, this dissertation investigates the consequence of adding dynamic audio (e.g., Spatial Audio) to AR advertisements of packaged food and beverage items. Across three empirical laboratory studies (presented in Chapters 9 – 11) we find that because dynamic audio produces distance-based variability in sound (i.e., the amplification/attenuation of sound when approaching/retreating from a geo-anchored target object, respectively), it increases consumers’ sense of immersion in digitally-augmented advertisements, and accordingly improves consumer attitudes toward featured products. In addition, we provide evidence for immersion as the underlying mechanism, and define theoretically and substantive boundary conditions for the effect.