Nitty-gritties of customer experience in metaverse retailing

Abstract

Metaverse has revolutionized the retail landscape and related customer experience. Yet, research in this area remains limited. This study unveils metaverse retailing aspects and their impact on customer experience by linking extracted twenty latent topics grouped under four themes, namely, immersive technology adoption, controlled interaction, agency interface integration, and novel metaverse environment with the Uses and Gratification Theory 2.0 (UGT 2.0) elements - modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability. The paper discusses metaverse retailing and customer experience research that can advance consumer research and help companies identify metaverse retailing customer experience improvement areas. The paper concludes with possible directions that can be undertaken in future research related to the four themes identified in the context of customer experience in metaverse retailing. The authors also propose three probable future research models that are well grounded in theory and arise from our analysis of work undertaken in the area of customer experience in metaverse retailing.