The impact of personally relevant consumption contexts during product evaluations in virtual reality

Abstract

Using immersive technology to restore relevant context in consumer sensory testing facilitates evaluations reflective of real-world experiences, enabling data collection with improved discriminability and reliability. Prior research has applied the same contextual environment to all participants without accounting for varying individual consumption habits. This study investigated how personal relevance (usage frequency) of the consumption environment influenced perception and acceptance. Sixty-two consumers evaluated four granola bars on overall liking, attribute intensity, and appropriateness of attribute level via Just-About-Right (JAR) questions under two 360° virtual environments individually selected as each subject’s most and least frequently used scenarios. To assess repeatability, subjects replicated the test three weeks later. Across participants, results indicated the products were rated similarly between environments. However, an individual’s responses were more reliable when made in the more relevant consumption scenario as demonstrated by higher correlation coefficients obtained between replicates. Additionally, penalty analyses revealed products tended to be penalized more for being not-JAR in the more relevant environment. Participants reported higher presence in the less relevant environment (p < 0.001) whose 360° videos tended to be livelier. Nonetheless, subject engagement was equally high in both environments (p > 0.05). These findings demonstrate that providing a personally relevant scenario for consumer testing generated more repeatable data to obtain reliable consumer insights. Differences in liking penalty between environments suggests evaluating products in a more familiar setting may allow consumers to draw more stable references for comparisons based on past experiences, resulting in a more severe decrease in acceptance when products fall below expectations.