How to model a customer journey in Augmented Reality

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Augmented Reality Marketing is a promising approach for brands (companies, NGOs, destinations, etc.) to interact with their target audiences (e.g., customers, internal stakeholders, the public, etc.). One way to understand target audiences is to study their "journey" and identify strategies for managing touchpoints. Touchpoints can be anything people associate with a brand, and marketers often classify them as either physical (e.g. newspaper ads) or digital (e.g. social media content). Augmented Reality touchpoints are different! They can be a specified as "hybrid" since virtual content is melted with physical objects through digital technologies (e.g., smartphones, AR smart glasses, or stationary setups).

Definition AR Marketing

AR Marketing is defined as the strategic integration of AR experiences, alone or in combination with other media or brand-related cues, to achieve overarching marketing goals by creating value for the brand, its stakeholders, and societies at large, while considering ethical implications. [source: Rauschnabel et al., 2022]

Most marketers use very simple customer journey frameworks to model consumer behavior, such as awareness, planning, purchase, and post-purchase. In our forthcoming article in the Journal of Business Research, we argue that AR Marketing can benefit from more nuanced models, and we discuss this using a B2C example with six phases.

A Six Phases Customer Journey Model for Augmented Reality Marketing

Phase 1: Awareness

Description: Consumer get to know and get aware of a brand and its offers

Example: John is reading an article about a recent Porsche model. He downloads the Porsche AR app and further researches the car at home. By doing so, he is learning more about Porsche and the specific model.

Phase 2: Exploration

Description: Consumer explores a brand and its products and offers without a specific need to purchase something, but with the goal to identify new needs or opportunities

Example: It is a Friday evening and Sarah is sitting on her couch. Although she does not need more cosmetics, she is exploring new makeup products – including some unusual ones she would never try in a physical store – using the Sephora AR app.

Phase 3: Planning

Description: Consumer is aware of the need to purchase a specific type of product and plans the purchase in detail.

Example: Nina wants to buy a specific couch. She wants to place it in a corner between some plants, but is worried it might look too “crowded” in the available space. So, she has also identified a suitable two-seater alternative. She tries both versions using the IKEA Place app to preview how both couches would look in her apartment. Me decides against the three-seater.

Phase 4: Purchase

Description: Consumer purchases a product through AR

Example: Lucy has experienced multiple different pizzas at a Domino’s restaurant using their AR app. She is clicking the buy button and orders the pizza she sees as a hologram on her table.

Phase?5: Use

Description: Consumer uses the product. In more detail:

Use 1: Setup

Example: Dirk bought Nanoleaf LED lights for his apartment. Before hanging them on the wall, he uses the setup app that allows him to plan and install the system by trying out various opportunities in AR.

Use 2: Actual Use

Example: Tim is playing with his new Lego toys. He uses the Lego AR app to augment additional LEGO characters into his toys.

?Use 3: Substitutes

Example: Mandy’s TV broke. Instead of purchasing a new hardware device, she decides to purchase a TV app for her Hololens device. She can now display a virtual TV screen everywhere.

Phase?6: Loyalty

Description: Consumers become and/or stays loyal to a brand

Example: Chris has an issue with his car. He contacts the service provider through an AR service app. The service representative applies an AR remote assist service app; with this app, the service representative shows Chris how to fix the car by drawing in Chris’ field of view.

Discussion and Status Quo

I have been using this framework for couple of years in AR Marketing classes and industry workshops. Typically, I print it on large posters and ask participants to model their own or an example brand. It works well and provides practical benefits to structure use cases. For instance, managers can model a journey with current marketing materials and then develop concepts for AR in each step. The journey model also alligns well with the four main objectives of AR Marketing ("BICK Four": Branding, Inspiring, Convincing, Keeping). Surely, not all concepts are practical, realizable, and useful, but we evaluate these concepts separately. Often, some "silly" concepts turned out to have a lot of potential with some modifications.

Regarding the status quo, we observe that the focus of most of today's marketing practices is in the early stages of the journey, as our recent survey among N=127 marketing managers shows. In the future, we - and the surveyed managers - expect more use cases in later phases in the (near) future. These findings confirm prior insights of a survey among 55 marketing managers by the Boston Consulting Group (Bona et al., 2018 ). A potential explanation for this finding is that branding and inspiration – for instance by AR games or product visualizers – can be "relatively easy" to developped (e.g. no need to integrate a simple product visualizer without purchase function with a firm's CRM system). these run on almost any consumer device.

References

Bona, et al. (2018). Augmented reality: Is the camera the next big thing in advertising? The Boston consulting group. BCG

Rauschnabel, P.A.; Babin, B.J.; tom Dieck, M.C.; Krey, N.; Jung, T. (2022) What is Augmented Reality Marketing? Its definition, complexity, and future . Journal of Business Research, SI-Editorial, in press. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.12.084