Digital Sensory Marketing Factors Affecting Customers’ Intentions to Continue Organic Online Purchases during COVID in India

Abstract

Myriad studies have examined the effect of web aesthetics on consumer purchases. However, customers’ intention to continue organic beauty products online purchases during COVID in the Indian context has received little attention. The purchase of beauty products has been perceived as a non-essential product category during COVID times, especially in developing markets like India. The goal of this research is to present an integrated theoretical framework, extending the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory to determine the factors that influence the intention to continue organic beauty purchases during COVID times. Specifically, the role of artificial intelligence/virtual reality (AI/VR) based sensory-enabling technologies (SET) web aesthetics. We performed in-depth semi-structured interviews of 136 customers of 7 organic beauty brands in India. The results based on thematic analysis (using NVIVO) and MCA analysis indicates that telepresence, audiovisual (AV) congruency, dynamism, local robotics and ethnic chatbots are associated with SET-based web aesthetics. On the other hand, the country of origin, source, ingredient, nature, control, sense of belonging and dominance are associated with traditional web aesthetics. Based on the extended SOR research model, a future research agenda comprising four propositions has been drawn.