AUGMENTED REALITY AND VIRTUAL REALITY IN RETAIL - A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Purpose – “Augmented and Virtual Reality” is a trend in retail that is lately catching a lot of attraction. These interactive technologies enhance the retail process by offering a better shopping experience and affects consumer's preference towards the retailers. Retailers need to align their business model to counteract the changing traffic patterns. This study will help in inferring trends, themes researched, identifying the prolific authors, researchers, and present the big picture. Methodology - To understand the current research state, Biblioshiny and VOS viewer has been employed to conduct a quantitative study on research papers done in the field of AR/VR in retail during the period 1993-2020 from the “Web of Science core database”.    Findings - (1) Increase in publication of papers in the past 27 years, divided into 2 parts: a low exploration period and developmental period. (2) The research covers 38 countries. With respect to the research volume, the top five countries being – (i) “China”, (ii) “the United States”, (iii) “the United Kingdom”, (iv) “Germany”, and (v) “South Korea”. There has been a lot of collaboration between these countries, with maximum collaboration between the USA and China. (3) Virtual Reality, Retailing, Interactivity are amongst the trending keywords in this field in recent years. (4) The main research themes in area of AR/VR in retail mainly focuses on the research directions like – the adoption of the technology, impact on consumer behavior, and performance and user's information control.   An overview of present state of academic studies was generated by employing a knowledge-based map which recognises researcher collaboration networks. This study is riveting as it has rarely been examined in this in a new manner.