Virtual Reality, Real Intentions

This chapter explores Virtual Reality (VR) as a marketing platform and research environment, defining core constructs and mapping key elements relevant to consumer and product studies. It outlines VR’s growth and applications, especially in retail and shopping, where immersive, interactive experiences can shape evaluation and choice. The review synthesizes how VR has been used to study consumers and products, detailing definitions, methodological options, and implications. It then evaluates VR’s role in empirical research, as a stand-alone tool or in hybrid designs, and contrasts VR with alternative experimental conditions, highlighting advantages and practical constraints. Evidence from product and shopping studies indicates that VR can elicit consumer responses broadly comparable to those observed in physical settings, despite current limitations (e.g., limited haptics), supporting its validity as a setting for consumer research and product evaluation. The chapter closes with a summary of selected literature and the implications for the volume’s study design, establishing the conceptual and methodological foundations for the subsequent chapters comparing packaging evaluations in VR and physical reality across structural, haptic, and visual cues.

This chapter synthesizes research on packaging design and consumers’ perceptions, in particular through the lens of sustainability. It first establishes packaging as a strategic cue system and identifies core design elements, such as structural (e.g., material, shape), visual/graphic (e.g., color, imagery), informational (e.g., labels, claims), and sensory/haptic (e.g., texture). It then reviews major frameworks and literature on sustainable packaging, identifying some relevant gaps: fragmented treatment of consumer-facing design attributes, generally limited recognizability of eco-cues, knowledge deficits, and trade-offs that hinder adoption. Organizing prior work, the chapter maps four themes: consumers’ knowledge and understanding of sustainable packaging; holistic approach to green packaging; analytical approach isolating specific cues; and, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors toward eco-friendly packaging. Evidence shows that sustainability cues shape consumers’ perceptions, influence attitudes and purchase intentions, and interact in complex ways. The chapter contributes an analytical, cue-based framework that consolidates fragmented insights and directly informs the experimental manipulations employed later in the volume (material for structural cues, texture for haptics, and color for visuals) to compare evaluations in Virtual Reality (VR) and physical reality.

This chapter specifies the research questions, derives testable hypotheses, and details the methodology for comparing consumer evaluations of packaging in Virtual Reality (VR) versus Physical Reality (PR). It targets three cue families, namely structural (glass, carton, plastic), haptic (rough, normal, smooth), and visual (green, beige, blue), applied to a milk pack.

Hypotheses predict effects on six outcomes (perceived sustainability, willingness to pay a premium, purchase intention, attitude toward packaging, perceived quality, attractiveness) and test whether VR elicits responses comparable to PR, with greater uncertainty for structural and haptic cues due to limited tactile feedback in VR. The main design is a laboratory experiment with a mixed between-within-subject design: 2 (VR vs. PR) × 7 manipulations, operationalized as three 2 × 3 sub-studies and preceded by a qualitative preliminary study. Custom physical and matched virtual mock-ups were developed to control manipulated attributes and enhance realism. Overall, the chapter links theory to an executable, cue-based design that enables rigorous VR-PR comparisons and sets up the empirical studies that follow.

This chapter reports the preparatory work and procedures underpinning the empirical studies. A preliminary qualitative study (two online focus groups) validated the packaging manipulations (structural, haptic, visual), assessed realism and relevance, and identified minor refinements to shapes, graphics, and color palette. A pilot then verified protocol timing, questionnaires, and manipulation checks before the main experiments. For the laboratory experiments, participants were randomly assigned to Virtual Reality (VR) or physical reality and evaluated one package at a time. The VR setup used an Oculus Quest 2 HMD with Leap Motion hand tracking and ray-traced lighting. A brief training task with an orange cube familiarized participants with the VR environment. Stimuli development produced seven physical milk-pack versions and seven matched VR counterparts. Procedures were harmonized across the two conditions, presentation order was randomized, and the same post-trial questionnaire captured six dependent variables. Analytically, each study used a mixed ANOVA, with repeated measures for the manipulations and a between-subjects design for the environments (VR vs physical reality).

Study 1 tests whether consumers evaluate structural packaging cues, manipulated as glass bottle, carton pack, and plastic bottle, similarly in Virtual Reality (VR) and physical reality across six outcomes. Results show no statistically significant between-condition differences overall for the structural manipulations. Minor divergences emerge for the glass bottle on perceived sustainability and attitude toward packaging, but the relative preference structure remains stable. Across both environments, the ranking is consistent for perceived sustainability and the remaining outcomes. The glass bottle is preferred over the carton pack, and the plastic bottle consistently scores the lowest. Overall, evaluations are largely comparable across VR and physical reality, supporting VR for comparative assessment of material cues, although the touch/weight cues are still absent in VR.

Study 2 examines haptic packaging cues, namely rough, baseline (normal), smooth, across Virtual Reality (VR) and physical reality on six outcomes. Results show no statistically significant between-condition differences overall for the haptic manipulations. Minor divergences emerge for smooth packaging on perceived sustainability and attitude toward packaging, but the relative preference structure remains stable. Across both environments, the ranking is consistent for perceived sustainability and the remaining outcomes. The rough packaging is preferred over the baseline pack, and the smooth packaging scores the lowest. Overall, evaluations are largely comparable across VR and physical reality, supporting VR for comparative assessment of haptic cues, despite the absence of tactile feedback in VR.

Study 3 tests visual packaging cues, namely green, beige, and the blue baseline, across Virtual Reality (VR) and physical reality on six outcomes. Results show no statistically significant between-condition differences across the outcomes, supporting the similarity hypothesis for visual manipulations. Within conditions, color effects are weak and often non-significant. Overall, color exerts limited influence relative to structural and haptic cues and does not seem to shift consumer responses in this context. These findings reinforce VR’s suitability for testing visual cues while suggesting that color alone is a comparatively weak lever for eco-related evaluations.

This chapter integrates findings across the three experiments and shows that consumer evaluations of packaging in Virtual Reality (VR) are broadly comparable to those in physical reality, with a few minor cue- and outcome-specific exceptions. It formalizes the research’s contributions: (1) establishing VR as a reliable setting for consumer and product research that yields physical-reality-like attitudinal and intentional outcomes; (2) demonstrating a cue-based methodology using matched VR environment stimuli and physical mock-ups; (3) clarifying the relative weight of cues in shaping perceived sustainability, attitudes, and intentions; and (4) positioning immersive testing as a bridge for more sustainable packaging innovation. Managerially, VR emerges as a decision-support tool for rapid, sustainable prototyping and multi-market testing, informing design and market assessment. The chapter also outlines a research agenda spanning cross-category replications, field and hybrid studies, multisensory interfaces, moderator analyses, and behavioral outcomes. Overall, it positions VR as a valid, practical environment for packaging evaluation and provides actionable directions for advancing immersive consumer research.

This chapter concludes the volume by summarizing the results of packaging evaluations in immersive settings. Across three experiments, manipulating structural, haptic, and visual packaging cues, consumer responses in Virtual Reality (VR) are broadly consistent with those in physical reality, with only cue- and outcome-specific minor divergences, supporting VR as a reliable environment for packaging assessment and, increasingly, as a meaningful shopping touchpoint. On the sustainability side, the volume shows that eco-oriented materials and textures choices tend to be favored, while color alone proves a weaker lever in this context. Moreover, VR enables rapid, low-waste prototyping and multi-market testing. This provides actionable guidance to streamline sustainable design decisions in both virtual and physical environments. Overall, the chapter consolidates contributions to marketing, immersive consumer research, and sustainable innovation, and outlines how these insights can inform subsequent scholarly and managerial work.