How augmented reality integrated mobile application influence the end consumer’s purchase intent for cosmetics?

Abstract

Augmented reality and virtual reality applications are widely used as technological solutions at varying points in a consumer journey to alleviate their entire experience. Cosmetics industry is one such industry where industry giants like Loreal and Mac are investing into the same to gain ground in a quicker fashion. Such solutions are being widely accepted especially in the West and the adoption has only been growing at a faster pace. The objective of our study was to understand the level of adoption in the Indian context and our group chose a survey-based experiment with a single category (lipstick) and single brand (Loreal) for simplicity for analysis. ANOVA and ANCOVA analysis were performed on the data obtained through survey of 60 respondents. The null hypothesis which was that the purchase intent at both the physical retail store and AR integrated mobile application is the same could not be rejected and hence the results are inconclusive for this study. The possible reasons for the same could be the inherent shortcomings of the experiment which are the small and homogeneous sample of respondents and the level of maturity and awareness about the technology to the society followed by the lack of trust in such advanced solutions. Both the issues will require time and effort from the firm’s side to arrive at a solution.