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

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 andimproving the AR market potential.