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Purpose This paper aims to explore the current and future roles of augmented reality (AR) as an enabler of omnichannel experiences across the customer journey. To advance the conceptual understanding and managerial exploitation of AR, the paper aims to synthesise current research, illustrating how a variety of current applications merge online and offline experiences, and provides a future research agenda to help advance the state of the art in AR. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on situated cognition theorising as a guiding framework, the paper reviews previously published research and currently deployed applications to provide a roadmap for future research efforts on AR-enabled omnichannel experiences across the customer journey. Findings AR offers myriad opportunities to provide customers with a seamless omnichannel journey, smoothing current obstacles, through a unique combination of embedded, embodied and extended customer experiences. These three principles constitute the overarching value drivers of AR and offer coherent, theory-driven organising principles for managers and researchers alike. Originality/value Current research has yet to provide a relevant, conceptually robust understanding of AR-enabled customer experiences. In light of the rapid development and widespread deployment of the technology, this paper provides an urgently needed framework for guiding the development of AR in an omnichannel context.

People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal. If the publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the "Taverne" license above, please follow below link for the End User Agreement:

No abstract

Recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have led to a growing interest in their application for marketing strategy and practice – what we term Augmented Reality Marketing (ARM). However, despite emerging publications on the subject, managers and academics struggle to articulate how ARM delivers experiences that are valuable to customers in a way that is different from other marketing approaches. In this article, we review the emerging literature, and define ARM as a customer-facing interface for the application of digital marketing technologies in physical settings. Rooted in a class of ‘situated cognition’ theories from social psychology, we identify a unique set of digital affordances which ARM offers beyond extant marketing approaches in traditional media. By drawing on the key conceptual building blocks of situated cognition theory, we develop a framework of ARM experiences to synthesize current research and applications, and to suggest directions for future research.

The rise of augmented reality (AR) technology, which overlays digital content to alter customers’ views of a physical service setting, using mobile and wearable computing, drives the digital automation of physical services. In particular, it promises to achieve tangibility even in service encounters delivered in digital formats. However, customer engagement with AR is falling short of expectations. Managers lack an integrated framework of AR service automation and therefore tend to focus on the technology rather than on the process of customer engagement with AR service automation. To address this problem, the current study proposes a technology-enabled engagement process that integrates multiple stages of customer engagement, as a service-centric process. To establish that engagement with AR service automation requires the inclusion of service tangibility, as part of the process, the authors decompose the steps of interactive service engagement, the spatial presence of the service, customers’ emotional and cognitive engagement with the service, and perceived value-in-use, which lead to emergent behavioral forms of engagement.

Despite the promise of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to help experiential retailers align online and offline experiences, guidance on choosing or combining these technologies is lacking. In three experiments, we address this research gap by investigating the individual and combined impact of AR and VR on key marketing objectives. First, we establish that AR is more effective in stimulating purchase intentions than VR, due to its ability to support customers in fluent product‐focused mental imagery. Second, we demonstrate that VR is better suited for improving brand attitudes than AR, as it helps customers to form fluent context‐focused mental imagery. Third, we show that AR and VR, in combination, can improve both purchase intentions and brand attitudes, but only when the order of deployment is sequenced as AR then VR. This is due to greater alignment with the customer's online‐to‐offline journey in experiential retail. When deployed the other way around, we observe a detrimental impact on purchase intentions and a potential harmful impact on brand attitudes. Our research offers a nuanced theoretical perspective of AR and VR in marketing and provides experiential retailers with evidence‐based guidelines for leveraging AR and VR within their online retailing strategy.

Augmented Reality (AR) holograms are 3D digital objects projected into a customer's physical environment through mobile technology. Applied as potential substitutes to physical products, AR holograms pose a unique challenge for conventional configurations of product ownership. Taking a socially situated cognition perspective, we demonstrate how customers' shared experience of AR holograms leads to distinct perspectives on psychological ownership. In Study 1, we demonstrate how customisation of AR holograms lets customers feel psychological ownership of digital products. In Study 2, we highlight the mechanisms of social adaptation related to assimilation and differentiation that drive the relationship between customisation and psychological ownership of AR holograms in social settings. In Study 3, we illustrate how these mechanisms are influenced by the affordances of AR technology when customers switch between personal or shared devices. We discuss implications for theory and marketing practice of this potentially novel class of digital consumer products.