ما در خانه هستیم: واقعیت تقویت شده بازاریابی موبایل و روابط نام تجاری، مصرف کننده را تغییر می دهد We ARe at home: How augmented reality reshapes mobile marketing and consumer-brand relationships

1. Introduction Augmented reality (AR), which describes the visual alignment of virtual content with real-world contexts (Carmigniani and Furht, 2011; Javornik, 2016a; Scholz and Smith, 2016), is a topic of immense interest for mobile marketing (e.g., Shankar et al., 2016) and retailing research (e.g., Grewal et al., 2017). This is largely due to the early adoption of AR in the retail sector, which is expected to account for about two thirds of the entire AR/VR market’s spending in 2018 (International Data Corporation, 2017). While early implementations used in-store installations (i.e., virtual dressing rooms) to overlay virtual clothes and shoes (e.g., Poncin and Mimoun, 2014), more recent AR initiatives utilize consumers’ own mobile devices (e.g., Hilken et al., 2017; Poushneh, 2018; Poushneh and Vasquez-Parraga, 2017b; Yim et al., 2017). Leading brands like IKEA, Wayfair, and Sephora have all introduced mobile AR shopping apps that enable consumers to virtually “try out” products on their own bodies or in their own spaces. As augmented reality becomes a central part in mobile marketing’s repertoire and allows brands to enter consumers’ domestic space with (virtual) offerings, it is crucial to examine how AR might reshape the mobile shopping experience (Shankar et al., 2016). Recent overview articles have especially highlighted mobile media’s potential to build deeper, more “intimate” (Fritz et al., 2017, p. 113; Shankar et al., 2010, p. 112), and “more meaningful relationships with shoppers than what is currently being done” (Shankar et al., 2016, p. 42). Augmented reality seems to be an ideal technology for forging such deeper relationships, as it fuses and entangles branded content with consumers’ own environments and bodies (Scholz and Smith, 2016). However, empirical research has yet to thoroughly examine this potential. Most previous research on augmented reality marketing has explored the user experience from an app-centric perspective, by examining consumers’ motivations for and reactions to using AR applications (e.g., Beck and Crié, 2018; Hilken et al., 2017; Javornik, 2016b; Poushneh, 2018; Poushneh and Vasquez-Parraga, 2017b; Yim et al., 2017). While this research provides important insights into specific aspects of the consumer journey, it remains quiet with regards to the broader question of what consumer-brand relationships can be facilitated through augmented reality. Furthermore, existing research predominantly examines consumers’ responses to AR apps in artificial lab settings that downplay the contexts in which AR apps are used. A few studies examine AR use in reallife-situations (e.g., Dacko, 2017; Poncin and Mimoun, 2014; Olsson et al., 2013); yet, they are mainly or entirely focused on exploring AR in retailing environments. Thus, even though consumers’ own homes are one of the top three places where mobile devices are used (Google, 2016), and even though major companies (e.g., IKEA, New York Times, Sephora) pitch their AR apps for in-home use, little is known about how consumers use mobile AR apps within their domestic space. To better examine consumers’ holistic, brand-related responses that result from using augmented reality applications in their homes, studies “in-thewild” are needed to “investigate interactions in context” (Javornik, 2016a, p. 259). Our research thus adopts ethnographic research methods to address two interrelated research questions: (1) What are consumers’ activities and experiences with an AR shopping app that they use within their domestic space? (2) What consumer-brand relationships arise as the retailer is invited into consumers’ familiar environments?