Published & Accepted Articles.

Adoption of Virtual-Reality Headsets: the Role of Metaverse Trials for Consumers’ Usage and Purchase Intentions.

by Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, Alina M. Herting, & David Jütte. Published online in: Journal of Interactive Marketing.

Stand-alone virtual-reality (VR) headsets such as Meta’s Quest series enable highly immersive social experiences. As part of a trend toward a trillion dollar “metaverse,” a virtual social environment for which headsets constitute the major access device, these headsets have been predicted to grow the market for VR hardware substantially. Despite huge investments from companies, adoption of headsets has not reached the mass market yet. While some see the reason in the limited value that accessing the metaverse via VR headsets offers consumers, others blame the experience character of headsets as an adoption barrier. To shed light on this market shaping issue, this research introduces the concept of metaverse trials as a special case of consumer product trials in which consumers test VR headsets for engaging in direct experiences in virtual worlds together with others, and it explores how such a trial affects headset adoption. Using a sample of almost 100 participants of an extensive metaverse trial and a matched sample of non-trialists, the authors find trialists’ intention to use VR headsets in the future to be higher, while their intention to purchase VR headsets is lower. They also study determinants and outcomes of key facets of the metaverse experience.

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Navigating the enterprise metaverse: How virtual reality affects business agility and meeting outcomes.

by Dorothea Nilusha Aliman, Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, & André Henke. Accepted in: Business Horizons, forthcoming.

Team meetings have been at the heart of businesses worldwide for a long time, regardless of industry and region. While precedent research has pointed at advantages and challenges of using virtual reality (VR) for team meetings, such as higher closeness and increased exhaustion, it is largely unclear which effects dominate in real-world conditions. With a focus on business agility, as an organization’s ability to adapt and respond quickly to developments and market conditions, but also studying other meeting outcomes, this research reports two studies in which managers of a public German organization use either videoconferencing or VR headsets for agile meetings. The findings suggest that in terms of business agility and other outcomes of interest, entering the enterprise metaverse with VR headsets can be worthwhile for suitable meetings. Based on these insights, the authors offer a six-step process which guides managers’ decision when and how to make the most out of metaverse meetings.

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Social interactions in the metaverse: Framework, initial evidence, and research roadmap.

by Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, Dorothea N. Aliman, Alina M. Herting, Gerrit P. Cziehso, Marc Linder, & Raoul V. Kübler. Published in: Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 51(1), 889–913 (2023).

Real-time multisensory social interactions (RMSIs) between people are at the center of the metaverse, a new computer-mediated environment consisting of virtual “worlds” in which people act and communicate with each other in real-time via avatars. This research investigates whether RMSIs in the metaverse, when accessed through virtual-reality headsets, can generate more value for interactants in terms of interaction outcomes (interaction performance, evaluation, and emotional responses) than those on the two-dimensional (2D) internet (e.g., Zoom meetings). We combine theoretical logic with extensive field-experimental probes (which support the value-creation potential of the virtual-reality metaverse, but contradict its general superiority) to develop and refine a framework of how RMSIs in the metaverse versus on the 2D internet affect interaction outcomes through interactants’ intermediate conditions. The refined framework serves as foundation for a research roadmap on RMSIs in the metaverse, in which we highlight the critical roles of specific mediating and moderating forces along with interactional formats for future investigations of the metaverse and also name key business areas and societal challenges that deserve scholarly attention.

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Metaverse Marketing.

by Thorsten Hennig-Thurau & Björn Ognibeni. Published in: NIM Marketing Intelligence Review, Volume 14 (Issue 2 2022), pages 43-47.

Companies can harvest the potential of the metaverse to create social value in various contexts. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and Björn Ognibeni explain how this is done best -- today, not in some far-away future.

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Wovon träumt das Metaverse?

by Thorsten Hennig-Thurau & Lisa Gotto. Published in: epd Film, Volume 39 (Issue 10 2022), pages 28-34.

For decades, science fiction movies have been envisioning virtual computer worlds that can be accessed by people via avatars. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is now tinkering on a grand scale to make social networks three-dimensional. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and Lisa Gotto on the vision and reality of the "metaverse" -- and about the virtual movie theaters that exist inside of it.

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Auf ins Metaverse.

by Thorsten Hennig-Thurau & Björn Ognibeni. Published in: Harvard Business manager, Volume 25 (Issue July 2022), pages 50-61.

Ever since Facebook became Meta, everyone has been talking about the "metaverse." Some warn of a hype, others smell huge business opportunities. In fact, the virtual 3-D worlds hold great opportunities for companies - in three areas.

Keywords: metaverse, value creation, virtual reality, use cases.

Download: An alternate version of this article can be downloaded as Working Paper Industry #2