Abstract

The future of online shopping will be shaped by the incorporation of technology and enhancement of experience provided by the webstores. The factors which have an impact on customers’ online purchase intension play a significant role in shaping ecommerce. The factors influencing consumers’ intention to use a virtual store, however, are understudied. The current study therefore considers sexperience economy, which explains the role of experience on economy. It also proposes a conceptual model that analyses the relationships between the factors including Simulated Environment through VR, Customers’ Online Purchase Intention, Customers’ attitude towards VR and User Engagement. In the model, User engagement and Customers’ attitude are considered as moderating factors between simulated Environment through VR and Customers’ online purchase intention (COPI). COPI is a dependent variable which varies with the changes in the simulated environment created through Virtual Reality (VR). The study first investigates the impact of simulated experience through VR on COPI then explains the moderating role of user engagement and attitude in shaping COPI. The research strongly draws on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model proposed by Mehrabian and Russel, which aligns with the conceptual framework developed for this study. The analysis employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. To examine differences between independent variables, we conducted ttests, while hypothesis testing involved regression analysis. The significance level was set at 0.05. To validate our findings, we performed a multicollinearity test, assessing the extent of correlation among the independent variables within the model.