Does Metaverse Fidelity Matter? Testing the Impact of Fidelity on Consumer Responses in Virtual Retail Stores
(A2023-114341)

AUTHORS

Darius-Aurel Frank, Aarhus University; Anne Peschel, Aarhus University; Jason DiPalma, Aarhus University; Daniel Blumenkranz, Aarhus University; Tobias Otterbring, University of Agder; Sascha Steinmann, Aarhus University, Department of Management

ABSTRACT

The future of retailing will take consumers to the metaverse. How these novel shopping experiences will look and feel remains largely unknown. Experts predict immersive metaverse retail experiences will help build even deeper connections with customers. We explored this hypothesis in an experiment (N = 133) on the effect of metaverse fidelity on consumer responses to shopping (vs. browsing) for groceries in a virtual retail store. The results indicate that high (vs. low) fidelity increases female customers’ loyalty intentions but has no impact on male customers, and is contingent on the activated goal, with customers’ loyalty intentions being increased after browsing but not shopping. These findings offer novel implications for the field, as they suggest metaverse fidelity to generate gender-specific responses that are also goal-specific, thus underscoring that contextual sensitivity might be a methodological barrier when running marketing-relevant metaverse studies.