Abstract
Purpose - Augmented reality (AR) content used in mobile media today can accommodate a wide variety of contextual information. This indicates that making people experience a sense of presence and flow is a very significant factor in augmented reality content. Flow represents a rich immersion potential as representing the progress of emotion and the means to facilitate the operation of the smart phone. Therefore, users will have friendly relational continuance behavior with products and brands that supply this experience. Based on that, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among smart phone AR application traits, presence, flow experience, and relational continuance behavior. First, AR application traits are defined as three categories sensory immersion, navigation, and manipulation, based on preceding studies. This study then examines the influence of AR application traits on the presence and flow experience and looks into the relation among presence, flow experience, and relational continuance behavior. This analysis suggests more detailed and concentrated strategic implications. Research design, data, and methodology - A research model is designed to examine the relation among AR application traits, presence, flow experience, and relational continued behavior. For data collection, questionnaire surveys were composed of multi-items for each component and the direct interview method was used for the interviews. To collect the data, after running the smart phone AR applications, the consumer behaviors of the respondents were generally determined. The questionnaire surveys were conducted for one month, October 2014. A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed with 278 questionnaires used for analysis, excluding the unanswered and insincere questionnaires. The data were analyzed using SPSS ver. 20.0 and LISREL ver. 8.51. Results - The following results are found: First, AR application traits have a significantly positive effect on presence with sensory immersion, navigation, and manipulation all having a significantly positive effect. Second, sensory immersion and manipulation among the AR application traits have a significantly positive effect on flow. However, navigation did not have a significantly positive effect on flow. Third, presence has a significantly positive effect on flow and has a significantly positive effect on relational continuance behavior. Moreover, flow also has a significantly positive effect on relational continuance behavior. This behavior tends to be formed since brands want to encourage relational continuance behavior and positive emotions with the brands being used. Relational continuance behavior accompanies repeat purchasing, positive word-of-mouth and recommendation activities, and forms of trust with the brand. Conclusions - The research results showed that smart phone AR traits had significantly positive effect on presence, flow, and relational continuance behavior. Based on this, smart phone AR application providers should establish an aggressive marketing strategy to accommodate more realistic problems in order to positively influence user behavior. Additionally, the marketers should make efforts to provide fun or convenience in the AR application operation process of the user.
