Virtual reality marketing and customer advocacy: Transforming experiences from story-telling to story-doing

Abstract

Marketing managers strive to build branded experiences that both excite and engage their customers in novel ways in order to enhance attitudes and encourage positive behaviors towards their brands. As it offers immersive and interactive encounters, Virtual Reality (VR) technology is a promising tool for managers to create these experiences, evidenced by increasing and successful VR marketing applications. Yet, the literature offers little guidance on how VR experiences can be strategically designed to create favorable customer perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. Based on five semi-structured focus groups of 27 VR consumers, this article constructs a framework that deconstructs VR branded experiences into both narrative and social interactions to optimize strategic customer outcomes. An experimental study validates the findings after which practical recommendations to maximize the success of VR branding campaigns and a future research agenda for VR marketing is provided.