Customer engagement through metaverse-empowered retail channels: role of personalization

Purpose With technological progress, retail companies must understand how to make virtual channels and environments more interactive to enhance user engagement. In this study, we apply the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) paradigm and the Customer Engagement Theory to investigate the impact of various types of customer engagement on the connection amid interactivity and continuous metaverse-empowered marketing channel usage. Design/methodology/approach The analysis was conducted using PLS-SEM on data collected via a representative sampling approach from 300 respondents on prolific online (the UK was fed as the country with the sample representing people with AR/VR gear). Findings It has been found that cognitive, emotional and social engagement positively and significantly mediates the relation between the variables studied. Personalization had a significantly negative moderating influence on the association between cognitive engagement and continuous use. Originality/value Besides extending existing research in the area of metaverse-empowered channels, the study’s findings provide important guidelines for retail companies to enhance customer engagement in virtual environments effectively.