Augmented Reality (AR) in Retailing: Customers’ Experience in Luxury Fashion

The adoption of augmented reality (AR) represents an extraordinary opportunity to enrich the value of the customer brand relationship, especially in fashion retail. Many firms utilise AR technology to enhance the consumer online shopping experience. In the retail industry, AR is gaining increasing traction as a means of improving the customer experience overall. Considering the varied value luxury fashion consumer holds, the purpose of this chapter is to contribute to existing literature and provide insight into the extent to which AR has proliferated in luxury fashion retail. Although AR has shown that it can enhance the consumer experience, its interactive features are still in the early stages of consumer adoption. Immersive excitement in the shopping experience increases sales and improves consumer engagement. Attracting and engaging the consumer with AR may provide luxury brands with an e-tool to help them lead in the luxury retail sector, which is becoming increasingly competitive. With AR, interactivity, augmentation, immersion, vividness and personalisation have been identified as core characteristics. Hedonic and utilitarian values are also provided through AR, improving the consumer decision-making process. The effect AR can have on luxury fashion can be understood further using the SOR model. Building on this logic, “when an individual encounters a stimulus (S), he/she develops internal states (O), which in turn dictates his/her responses (R)” (Mehrabian & Russell, An approach to environmental psychology. The MIT Press, 1974, p. 298).