The influence of flow experience in the augmented reality context on psychological ownership

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) technology shows great potential for marketers and simultaneously puts forward a challenge for established marketing practice. This paper explores the driving factors of flow experience in the AR shopping environment, and how this relationship affects consumers’ psychological ownership. The research also examines the moderating role of brand attachment in the relationship between flow experience and its antecedents. A Likert-type survey was used to explore 527 customers’ experiences of using a virtual try-on AR application in Zara’s physical stores in Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, Changsha, and Guangzhou. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the hypothesized relationships among all variables. The results illustrate that perceived informativeness, perceived aesthetics, perceived novelty, and parasocial relationship positively affect consumers’ flow experience, which in turn positively influences psychological ownership. Flow experience partially mediates the relationships between consumer perceptions and psychological ownership. Brand attachment acts as a moderator on the relationships between consumer perceptions and flow experience. Moreover, brand attachment is proposed to interact with customer perceptions and psychological ownership through the mediation of flow experience.