Gamifying virtual reality shopping experiences: a case study on a real-world scenario

Abstract Virtual Reality (VR) is transforming how consumers interact with products in e-commerce, enabling immersive, engaging, and emotionally connected experiences that resemble those of physical retail stores. However, the extent to which these experiences influence actual purchase intention and behaviour remains largely unexplored. This paper presents an exploratory study examining how immersive and gamified shopping experiences affect consumer behaviour. A custom VR application was developed with two scenarios: one featuring real products digitized using Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), and another offering a gamified experience based on a graphic novel, requiring users to solve a puzzle to follow the storyline. The study involved 48 participants during a real commercial event, where they could use their own money to purchase the products explored in the virtual store or the graphic novel from the gamified scene, facilitating authentic purchase decisions. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining qualitative feedback with quantitative analysis of in-app behaviour. The study extracted a range of space–time and kinematic metrics, such as interaction frequency, navigation efficiency, and locomotion patterns, to characterize user behaviour. Additionally, unsupervised clustering techniques were applied to identify distinct behavioural profiles, revealing significant differences between buyers and non-buyers. The results, including a conversion rate of 35.42%, show that specific user behaviours and attitudes are closely linked to final purchasing decisions. This study provides empirical evidence of the transformative role of VR and gamification in the evolution of e-commerce, highlighting their potential to enhance user engagement and drive effective purchase behaviour in real-world commercial contexts.