How Do Shoppers Behave in Extended Realities? A Video-based Comparative Thematic Study

Currently, extended reality (XR) as one of the most important disruptive technologies has been witnessed to reshape consumer experience in many domains. However, little research has been conducted to explore the new paradigm regarding consumer experience and behaviors in XR-mediated environments. This study aims to explore emerging behaviors as well as new dimensions of consumer experience in different extended realities in the shopping context, by using a video-based comparative thematic analysis approach. Observations on the shopping behaviors of 162 participants across three implementations of extended realities (VR, AR, AV) and a normal brick-and-mortar comparison-point were recorded. Over 67 hours of video recordings were used and interpreted in metaphorical heuristics, before being analyzed by inter-group comparisons, to develop reflective themes. Our results lead to two themes being constructed, illustrating that XR users connect their behaviors from physical reality to those in XR (as formed by our sub-themes “synchronizing”, “attaching”, “habituating”, “responding”), but they also appear to reconstruct new behavioral schemas (demonstrated by sub-themes “merging”, “adjusting”, “focusing”, “experimenting”). The findings of this study help deepen our understanding of consumers’ behavioral similarities and divergences between physical reality and different virtual realities.