Interactive product presentation in an immersive environment: The influence of functional control on hedonic aspects

Functional control in webshops allows consumers to virtually experience the different functions of a product. To date, however, the potential benefits of enabling functional control in online product presentations in addition to standard visual control have only been studied and proven for non-immersive virtual environments but not for immersive virtual reality shopping experiences in webshops. We close this research gap by comparing an immersive product presentation format with visual control (grabbing a product and viewing it from different angles) to that of an immersive product presentation format with additional functional control (experiencing and inspecting the different functionalities of the product) by means of a between-subjects experiment. Our special focus is on the influence of functional control on the hedonic aspects of online shopping since interactive immersive webshops are known to offer particular potential to enhance the hedonistic shopping experience of consumers. Our findings suggest that (1) the possibility to try out product functions in an immersive environment can significantly increase the shopping experience of consumers and that (2) hedonic aspects like the enjoyment of consumers actually seem to play a highly important role in immersive webshops. Accordingly, as a practical implication of our study, companies should consider investing in functional control elements when presenting their products in immersive virtual reality webshops as a way to gain a competitive advantage.