The Reality of Virtuality

Virtual Reality (VR) technology has become more sophisticated and widespread. Consumers embrace it for gaming and entertainment. New industries are using it to showcase their products and services, with VR experiences becoming more immersive and realistic than ever. Where does VR fit into your marketing strategy? How can your brand use it to leave a lasting impression on users or, at the very least, drum up excitement around the experience? And how can your brand utilize VR to interact with your target market to improve consumer engagement and loyalty? The Reality of Virtuality is both practitioner-oriented and evidence-based, showing marketing managers in the B2C and B2B sectors how to design a compelling VR marketing strategy and leverage it for their brand. This book discusses how to select the appropriate VR type dependent on resources, technology, and audience. It shows how to align the VR experience with marketing objectives (i.e., consumer engagement, brand building, attitude management, selling in VR, product co-creation, publicity, awareness building and more), and how to create a purpose-driven VR experience to ensure it is engaging and meaningful. Lastly, it shows how to incorporate VR into the consumer journey, the ways to reach consumers before the VR experience, and the long-lasting effects after it. The authors use examples, references, and industry expert opinions throughout to fully illustrate each lesson, giving marketers a solid foundation for their VR endeavours in the field today and in the future.

Dr. Kirsten Cowan (Senior Lecturer in marketing at University of Edinburgh) researches how immersive technologies engage consumers at each phase of the consumer journey. As such, VR has been the focus of her latest research. These projects review extant research on VR, investigate how consumer involvement in VR affects information processing, evinces how sensory marketing shapes consumer responses toward brands, and examines how virtual experiences differ from real experiences. Her publications on VR appeared in Journal of Business Research and European Journal of Marketing. One of her current projects with Dr. Ketron and Dr. Kostyk investigates sensory inputs in VR. Dr. Seth Ketron is an Assistant Professor of marketing at the University of St. Thomas, USA. His research interests are primarily in consumer behavior and retailing, specifically focusing on sensory marketing and information processing as well as VR. He has co-authored publications on virtual reality with Dr. Cowan in Journal of Business Research and European Journal of Marketing and, along with Dr. Cowan and Dr. Kostyk, won "The Most Innovative" paper award at the 2019 Academy of Marketing Global Branding SIG. Dr. Alena Kostyk is a Senior Lecturer in marketing at the University of Glasgow, UK. She has been long fascinated by consumers' response to technology-enhanced environments. She was awarded several grants for impact-focused collaborations that build on her VR research. She works with tourism organizations in Scotland to develop their VR marketing; engages with VR marketing content creators, and specialized industry groups. Her work appears in academic outlets such as Business Horizons, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research. Prior to academia, she spent nearly 10 years working in the private sector.