Creating a Mixed Reality Retail Experience With Present Hardware Limitations

In the retail context, Virtual Reality is great for building prominent brand identity and spectacle experiences while Augmented Reality allows users to explore products in their own comfort zones thus increasing users' purchase intentions (Bogicevic et al., 2019, Heller et al., 2019, Hilken et al., 2021). This research investigates methodologies that can be used to create a mixed-reality retail experience by combining the best aspects of Augmented and Virtual Reality under one system. The accompanied experience utilizes the passthrough capabilities of the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset, which allows users to switch between being completely immersed in a virtual environment (VR) and being in their own environment while seeing virtual objects overlaid (AR) to create a system that can seamlessly switch between both worlds. Furthermore, the research explores designing interactions and elements that would be pertinent in both AR and VR scenarios to offer an immersive and engaging mixed-reality experience.