Augmented Reality Marketing: A Systematic Literature Review and an Agenda for Future Inquiry

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) is a potentially disruptive technology that enriches the consumer experience and transforms marketing. With the surging popularity of AR in marketing practice, academic efforts to investigate its effects on consumer experience, response, and behavior have increased significantly. To obtain an integrated and comprehensive view of the front-line in AR marketing research and identify the gaps for future research, we analyze the existing AR marketing literature through a systematic literature review. Using 99 journal articles selected from the Web of Science core collections, this research sheds light on the general characteristics such as publication year, publication outlet, research design, and research method. Moreover, this research also gains insight into the AR marketing relevant factors such as application area, application context, AR type, and theoretical lenses. The findings of the analyses reveal the state-of-the-art of scholarly publications on AR marketing research. First, the number of journal articles on AR marketing increased rapidly in the past few years, and the journals that published articles on AR marketing cover a wide range of disciplines. Second, the empirical studies in most literature adopted the quantitative research design and used survey or experiment methods. Third, the studies in more than half of the journal articles used mobile AR applications in various online contexts. Fourth, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework are the two most widely used theoretical lenses used in the literature. After that, the major application areas of AR in marketing are retail, tourism, and advertising. To identify the focal themes discussed in the three application areas, this research summarizes the studies by the outcome variables. Specifically, the outcome variables have five categories: technology-related, product-related, brand-related, tourist destination-related, and advertisement-related. Finally, this research proposes the agenda for future academic efforts in AR marketing.

Investigating retailing customers' adoption of augmented reality apps: integrating the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) and task-technology fit (TTF)

“…The present study concurs with Riar et al. (2022) and Du et al. (2022) that there needs to be more research on consumers' intentions to adopt AR apps in e-retailing since the technology is still in its infancy.…”

“…Thus, this study examines how electronic retail businesses adopt AR apps. The present study concurs with Riar et al (2022) and Du et al (2022) that there needs to be more research on consumers' intentions to adopt AR apps in e-retailing since the technology is still in its infancy. The significance of the current study appears in that most previous research studies relied mainly on the technology acceptance model (TAM) model (Castillo and Bigne, 2021;Saleem et al, 2022).…”

“…According to surveys of many previous studies, Caboni and Hagberg (2019), Saleem et al (2022), Du et al (2022) and Riar et al (2022) stated that AR plays a fundamental role in the future development of the retail sector; however, understanding how AR applications affect customers' BI still requires further study based on theoretical foundations. Thus, the current study tries to investigate the following research questions:…”

Context in augmented reality marketing: Does the place of use matter?

“…The concept of AR is a significant area for new research in the marketing discipline, as shown through recent literature reviews (e.g., Du et al, 2022; Kumar et al, 2023; Rejeb et al, 2021). Broadly speaking, these studies have focused on defining AR marketing and its characteristics (Hilken et al, 2018; Javornik, 2016; Rauschnabel, Felix, et al, 2022) or assessed strategic (Hilken, Chylinski, et al, 2022; Javornik, Duffy, et al, 2021; Rauschnabel, Babin, et al, 2022) and consumer‐related (e.g., Kumar et al, 2023; Sung et al, 2021; tom Dieck & Han, 2022) research questions.…”

Artificial intelligence in retail – a systematic literature review

“…A multitude of SLRs relates already to the retail sector (Bonfrer et al, 2022;Cai and Lo, 2020;Lagorio and Pinto, 2021). Some research papers analyse technologies in the context of retail activities with a SLR (Du et al, 2022;Xi and Hamari, 2021;Xue et al, 2019). AI is reshaping retail (Shankar, 2018).…”