Enhancing shopping experience in augmented reality by customizing product manipulation modalities: A customer experience study

• Users prefer free hand scaling to manipulate small virtual objects in AR • Users prefer automatic 1:1 scaling to manipulate large virtual objects in AR • Changing manipulation modality according to product size enriches user experience • Product size and manipulation modality does not affect shopping satisfaction In recent years, Augmented Reality (AR) technology has permeated various domains. This paper focuses on the critical aspect of enhancing customer interaction within AR e-commerce environments by investigating the impact of virtual product size manipulation on usability, user experience, and shopping satisfaction. We tested two manipulation modalities: an unconstrained scaling modality, enabling users to manually adjust product dimensions, and an assisted modality providing automatic 1:1 scaling. Using the Microsoft HoloLens 2 AR headset, we engaged 40 participants with small and large virtual products in shopping scenarios using these two manipulation modalities. Results show that users found the automatic manipulation modality to provide a superior user experience, being more effective, easy, useful, and pleasant when interacting with large virtual products. For small virtual products, they expressed a preference for free manipulation. Customer satisfaction with the shopping experience is positive, however, product size and manipulation modality affect the repatronage intention. The findings offer insights into designing AR e-commerce interfaces, highlighting that providing different manipulation modalities depending on the size of the products allows for enriching the shopping experience and improving the AR market potential.