USING AUGMENTED REALITY TO REINFORCE VIVID MEMORIES AND PRODUCE A DIGITAL INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE

1. IntroductionBecause online consumers increasingly seek to receive visual and tactile stimulation [Karimov et al. 2011; Sautter et al. 2004; Song & Kim 2012; Suntornpithug & Khamalah 2010], online retailers' adoption of multisensory augmented-reality interactive technology (ARIT) to provide consumers with a tactile experience of commodities has become a trend in online shopping [Spence & Gallace 2011]. Online retailers have determined that a considerably higher proportion of first-time visitors to online shopping websites that use ARIT become loyal consumers, compared with 57% of first-time visitors to online shopping websites that do not use ARIT [e.g., traditional auction websites or shopping malls; Demery 2010]. In other words, ARIT has become an optimal measure for establishing an online shopping experience [Cui et al. 2011; Prahalad & Ramaswamy 2004]. As shown in Figure 1, ARIT uses three-dimensional (3D) visual and auditory effects and haptic imagery to provide consumers with an online clothes-fitting experience [Kalckert & Ehrsson 2012]. Accordingly, ARIT enables online consumers to adjust the size of fashion products and select various types of clothing as well as determine immediately whether the fashion products or clothes fit their face shapes and physiques. By contrast, traditional online stores enable consumers to view how fashion products or clothes appear only on models [Peck et al. 2013; Song & Kim 2012]. In addition, ARIT creates a virtual environment in which consumers can try on clothes or fashion products [Tang et al. 2004]. Thus, ARIT combines virtual fashion products and consumer images to provide online consumers with a virtual clothes-fitting experience [Azuma 1997; Benford et al. 1998; van Krevelen & Poelman 2010]. ARIT overlays digital information to the user's perception of the physical world. The technology can provide users with information that is contextually personally meaningful and pleasurable. Interacting with different environments through ARIT could provide rich and novel experiences [Olsson et al. 2013]. The current trends in applying ARIT indicate that the focus of interactive technology is shifting from usability or functionality problems to providing consumers with a rich, stimulating, and pleasurable user experience [Fogg 2003; Garrett 2011]. During virtual augmented-reality clothes-fitting processes, online consumers can gain a sense of ownership control and immersive experience by mental simulation (e.g., haptic and 3D visual imagery used to simulate the touching of products) [Chark & Muthukrishnan 2013; Kilteni et al. 2012; Song & Kim 2012]. Mental simulation enables vivid memories of consumption experience to be evoked and activated [Segovia & Bailenson 2009], and subsequent exploration and persistent consumption behavior can be induced [Manthiou et al. 2014; Singer & Salovey 1993]. Vivid memories can be considered a basis and script for forming a subsequent virtual experience and exploratory consumption behavior in an augmented-reality environment. Script theory states that vivid memories provide a script to consumers, which produces subsequent consumption behavior [Erasmus et al. 2002]. Most previous studies on augmented reality [e.g., Coovert et al. 2014; Cai et al. 2014] have applied ARIT to learning. In other words, previous studies have focused on using visual effects for reinforcing communication and learning, but these studies have not investigated how vivid memories affect subsequent consumption behavior. In addition, previous studies on vivid memories [e.g., Tung & Ritchie 2011] have not clearly identified the types of exploratory consumption behavior that can be induced by vivid memories, particularly in an online augmented-reality consumption context. To supplement the insufficient research on vivid memories, the present study examined the relationship between vivid memories and exploratory consumption experience according to script theory. …