Extended reality technologies in small and medium-sized European industrial companies: level of awareness, diffusion and enablers of adoption

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), collectively referred to as “extended reality” (XR), have begun to diffuse in industry. However, the current levels of awareness, perceived limitations, and use of AR and VR, as well as the potential differences on these aspects between these technologies are still not well known. Moreover, it is unknown whether small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) differ from large companies on these issues. This research employed a mixed methods research design to address this gap by carrying out a cross-sectional survey (n = 208) to gauge European industrial companies’ level of AR and VR awareness and adoption, and by interviewing 45 companies in nine European countries in order to identify critical enabling factors in the adoption of XR for SMEs. Results show no statistical difference between the respondents’ perceptions toward AR and VR or in their use levels. Thus, examining AR and VR under the umbrella term XR seems justified, especially in the context of their organizational use. However, larger companies were found to be using XR more than SMEs. Analysis of interviews based on the technology–organization–environment framework also yielded several enabling factors affecting XR adoption and specified whether they are particularly highlighted in the SME context. Overall, this paper contributes to XR research by providing a holistic multi-country overview that highlights key issues for managers aiming to invest in these technologies, as well as critical organizational perspectives to be considered by scholars.

Development of an augmented reality remote maintenance adoption model through qualitative analysis of success factors

“…Early work was presented by Rapaccini et al ( 2014 ), who investigated organizational adoption challenges and user acceptance issues of an Italian printing equipment manufacturer’s field service unit. Jalo et al ( 2022 ) identified application opportunities and enablers of ARRM adoption based on interviews and focus groups with five Finnish companies. However, they investigated ARRM in terms of supporting facility management, which is a completely different business environment compared to industrial product–service systems.…”

“…Other researchers have provided adoption studies on a wide range of industrial AR applications and use cases (Egger and Masood 2020 ; Jalo et al 2022 ; Masood and Egger 2019 ; Porter and Heppelmann 2017 ; Si2 Partners 2018 ), whereas we focus solely on AR in a remote collaborative and inter-organizational troubleshooting setting. Porter and Heppelmann ( 2017 ) presented a narrative work discussing the potential of industrial AR using illustrative adoption examples of US firms.…”

“…Jalo et al ( 2022 ) identified 13 enabling factors for extended (augmented and virtual) reality, proposing an adoption model based on an interview study with 45 European manufacturing companies. Their methodology is comparable to ours and contributes to the nascent research on organizational adoption factors.…”

“…Therefore, the TOE framework is preferred over the IDT as a general research framework to guide this study. Additionally, the TOE framework provides a strong empirical basis across related technologies, including industrial AR (Masood and Egger 2019 ), industrial extended reality (XR) (Jalo et al 2022 ), eMaintenance (Aboelmaged 2014 ), and earlier inter-organizational innovations, such as electronic data interchange (Hsu et al 2006 ; Zhu et al 2003 , 2006 ). However, TOE is rather generic and does not specify the concrete constructs and factors that determine technology adoption success.…”

“…Because many of the most obstructive technical limitations of ARRM are overcome, the technology seems to be on the verge of becoming a remote service delivery tool in the industry (Masoni et al 2017 ; Si2 Partners 2018 ). Nevertheless, it is still far from being diffused across industry (Jalo et al 2022 ; Marques et al 2022 ; Runji et al 2022 ; Si2 Partners 2018 ). The reason might be that industry is struggling with organizational rather than technical adoption aspects (Masood and Egger 2019 ; Si2 Partners 2018 ).…”