VR shopping: A review of literature

Via the recent proliferation of consumer-grade head-mounted VR technologies, the retailers as well as related scholarly areas have started to increasingly notice the possible potential of virtual reality. However, there is no coherent understanding of the state-of-the-art of the literature on VR shopping, how VR shopping has been investigated and what empirically indicated benefits VR has for a variety of marketing outcomes. Therefore, in this paper, we systematically review the published body of literature on VR shopping (N = 40). The current study contributes to the VR shopping and marketing literature by mapping the VR technologies, product types, consumer experiences and research methods in the extant literature. The review shows that the literature on VR shopping is still in its infancy and there remains ample room for progression both in breadth and depth in the literature on VR shopping in terms of methodological rigor and theoretical prowess.