Abstract

Not only since the launch of Pokémon Go in July 2016, augmented reality (AR) has received a big boost in awareness and popularity. AR-based start-ups have entered the market, and established companies start to offer AR functionalities in their smartphone applications. A new distribution channel in form of augmented commerce has been emerging, although only little is known about optimized design of AR environments due to the limited number of user studies researching the effects of AR usage. This paper’s research objective is to tackle this gap by analysing AR technology in combination with online recommendations, a well-established, ubiquitous design element in today’s e-commerce. We conducted a controlled online experiment with 208 subjects to examine the effects of customer recommendations (CR) and increasingly emerging seller recommendations (SR) in AR applications. Our results demonstrate that CRs in AR applications positively influence the intention to purchase and the selection of products by decreasing a customer’s product fit uncertainty, whereas SRs displayed no significant influence. These insights are the first steps to further understand how AR and online recommendations can be used and have to be implemented to provide customers with novel and accepted sources of value.

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