How virtual reality shopping experience enhances consumer creativity: The mediating role of perceptual curiosity

With the rise of the contact-free era, consumers enjoy shopping via virtual reality (VR) without any physical constraints. The expansion of a sensory shopping experience via VR can enrich consumers’ positive emotions and stimulate their imagination and creative thinking. However, there is a lack of research exploring the role of VR in enhancing consumer creativity in the context of shopping. This study aims to investigate the mechanism between the VR shopping experience and consumer creativity. Specifically, two laboratory experiments demonstrate that the experience mode of VR (non-immersive vs immersive) increases consumers’ creative ability through an increased perceptual curiosity toward the VR store. Furthermore, we find that the function of store fantasy (reality-based vs fantasy-based) can boost perceptual curiosity. This study contributes to existing literature and provides value to retailers who plan to create VR shopping content.