LEVERAGING AUGMENTED REALITY IN APPAREL INDUSTRY

1.     Introduction

1.1.  Background

As e-commerce platforms are increasingly being deployed across society, the apparel industry is leveraging available technologies to expand the consumer base, increase market share, and tap into new market segments. E-commerce platforms offer a robust, internet-based shopping experience that enhances accessibility and mobility of commodities. Despite this feature of these innovative business frameworks, they do not offer immersive shopping experience enjoyed in brick-and-mortar outlets. This weakness reduces the ability of fashion firms to facilitate seamless shopping experience, reducing customer satisfaction and return rates. These limitations compel the apparel industry to rely on immersive technologies such as augmented reality to provide an omnichannel marketing framework.[1] Such a framework integrates distribution, promotion, and communication frameworks into the marketing process, leading to customer satisfaction and retention. Integrating this marketing strategy with augmented reality optimizes the shopping experience enjoyed by the customers, leading to customer loyalty and a robust consumer base.[2] In the omnichannel environment of the fashion apparel industry, augmented reality is a mitigator that leads to incremental sales by virtual try-on, increasing customer engagement, and reducing returns.

1.2.  Significance of the Study

This study examines the implementation of augmented reality in the apparel industry and its ability to provide an omnichannel marketing framework, offering a robust understanding of this emerging technology and its influence on society. Omni-channel marketing strategies enable firms to expand the consumer base, increase market share, tap into new frontiers, and enhance the company’s strategic positioning. On the other hand, augmented reality enables customers to experience an enhanced environment, allowing them to interact with their preferred products from the retailers effectively. The integration of this marketing strategy with the technology offers a robust corporate framework, enabling fashion outlets to provide an immersive shopping experience that reduces unsatisfactory items’ returns and increases customer loyalty. The ability of the research to extensively address this issue and offer a robust implementation framework enables these firms to leverage this technology, enhancing their sales and increasing revenue generation. Further, such focus extensively examines the benefits of augmented reality in achieving strategic objectives, features that are easily replicated in other industries. Thus, this study provides a practical framework for integrating augmented reality in the apparel industry, leading to a streamlined shopping experience that increases customer engagement and reduces returns.

1.3.  Research Objectives

The overarching objective of the study is to examine how augmented reality optimizes omnichannel marketing in the fashion industry, enabling these firms to increase sales and enhance customer satisfaction. There are three specific objectives designed to address this primary goal of the study. These objectives are highlighted below:

1. The research seeks to examine how augmented reality fosters a robust marketing framework in the corporate environment.
2. The research intends to examine the benefits of leveraging augmented reality in omnichannel marketing.
3. The review assesses the performance of the apparel industry under the augmented reality-mediated omnichannel marketing framework.

1.4.  Research Question

The overarching research question is, “How does augmented reality optimize omnichannel marketing in the apparel industry?” There are three sub-questions developed to address this research question and establish a robust framework for the study. These questions are:

1. What are the impacts of augmented reality in corporate marketing strategies?
2. What are the benefits of integrating augmented reality in omnichannel marketing frameworks?
3. How does the apparel industry perform under the augmented reality and omnichannel marketing strategy?

1.5.  Research Hypothesis

There are three hypotheses developed for the study, which are:

1. Augmented reality provides an immersive marketing framework that nurtures customer loyalty and expands the consumer base.
2. The integration of augmented reality and omnichannel marketing increases the gross sales by enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing returns of unsatisfactory items.
3. Leveraging augmented reality and omnichannel marketing in the apparel industry enables firms to achieve strategic positioning and gain competitive advantage through a seamless shopping experience.

2.     Literature Review

2.1.  Omni-channel Marketing and E-commerce

E-commerce platforms provide an innovative framework for enhancing business presence and increasing brand awareness. These frameworks enable firms to host their products and services online, increasing accessibility of these commodities and allowing them to access them at their convenience. Additionally, e-commerce platforms leverage social media and network tools to foster brand awareness and increase market penetration of corporate items. This feature enables these firms to effectively resolve traditional marketing frameworks’ limitations, leading to a robust market share and enhanced consumer base. The inexpensive nature of these business models and their ability to address a broad audience and trespass the physical barriers make them ideal business frameworks for contemporary firms. These industries rely on these models to establish a robust market presence, enabling them to achieve strategic positioning and competitive advantage. These features make this business model a popular enterprise framework, a phenomenon that increases its adoption and integration into existing brick-and-mortar shops. The stiff competition achieved from such extensive implementation of e-commerce models compels them to devise comprehensive strategies that enable them to outperform their rivals and expand the market share. Such approaches rely on the innovativeness of the individual corporations, their resource capability, and receptive business strategies that easily integrate new frameworks.

One such approach is the omnichannel marketing strategy that seeks to establish a comprehensive and robust business framework while focusing on consumer needs. Omni-channel marketing approach offers a complete customer engagement framework that increases satisfaction for the products selected, value for money, and nurtures brand loyalty. These features are achieved through comprehensive and useful data integration across the firm’s segment, leading to unified and robust decision making processes. For instance, a customer relationship manager provides information regarding the consumer’s tastes and preferences, while the marketing manager avails products that reflect these consumer dynamics. Conventionally, these corporate departments would work independently to achieve the firm’s strategic goals and leverage market opportunities. However, this is not the situation in an omnichannel marketing strategy. These departments effectively share data across them, leading to a robust and extensive customer-oriented marketing framework. Such a marketing strategy builds strong consumer relationships that foster holistic shopping experience and immersive engagement with consumer needs.[3] Similarly, omnichannel marketing aligns corporate content with the consumer needs, providing a personalized and robust customer engagement framework that enhances gross sales and increases brand loyalty. Through this focus, this marketing strategy offers a holistic, comprehensive, and robust customer management approach that improves brand recognition, grows market share, and expands the consumer base.

There are four main components of the omnichannel marketing framework that collectively establish a holistic and comprehensive consumer engagement strategy. The first component is marketing channels that enable the firm to reach out to clients. Marketing channels provide a point of contact with the customers, enabling the firm to create awareness regarding its products and services.[4] E-commerce platforms leverage social media and websites as their marketing channels, allowing them to access consumer segments and create awareness regarding corporate commodities. For instance, an apparel firm depends on social media marketing strategies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to appeal to diverse consumers, create awareness regarding its fashion products, and cultivate brand loyalty. The integration of brand influencers and celebrities in these social media marketing framework enables these firms to increase sales, appeal to specific market segments, and increase the relative market share. These strategies allow these firms to outperform their rivals and obtain a competitive advantage, leading to strategic positioning. Due to this significance of marketing channels in corporate performance, enterprises have significantly invested in diverse and innovative avenues to increase brand awareness and nurture customer loyalty.

The second component is consistency, where this marketing strategy offers a seamless shopping experience that increases customer engagement regardless of the medium. Brick-and-mortar shops have high customer satisfaction due to their ability to enable clients to try out products before purchasing. This marketing approach reduces returns and creates value for money, cultivating customer loyalty and increasing the market share. However, conventional e-commerce platforms lack these features due to the inability to provide immersive shopping experience, reducing customer satisfaction, and increasing returns for defective or unsatisfactory products. This aspect of e-commerce platforms compromises their ability to compete with brick-and-mortar shops on customer satisfaction effectively. For instance, consumers accessing online fashion stores may have challenges in selecting their ideal garments due to their inability to try them before the purchase. Due to this limitation, they proceed to purchase the item and return it when they feel it does not meet their expectations. If the retail outlet does not offer a return policy, then it is disconnected from such consumers. This situation reduces the market share, shrinks the consumer base, and affects brand loyalty. However, an immersive marketing framework would adequately address these concerns if it enabled customers to try the products before purchasing them. Thus, the consistency feature in an omnichannel marketing framework ensures firms offer consumers a streamlined shopping experience, whether through brick-and-mortar shops or online platforms.

The third component is personalization, where products and services are designed to address specific consumer needs. Omni-channel marketing framework enables the company to effectively understand consumer needs and design products that adequately meet these customer dynamics. This feature of the marketing strategy allows the firm to enhance customer satisfaction, build brand loyalty, and increase sales. For instance, a fashion company accesses information regarding the customer’s geographical location, preferences, and other essential details from customer segmentation data. The integration of such information with social media content enables the firm to develop robust marketing strategies that address these consumer dynamics and increase brand recognition. This aspect allows the outlet to establish a personalized and healthy relationship with the client, leading to high sales and expanded market share. The last component is optimization, where omnichannel marketing enhances a company’s market performance in a specific brand. This framework enables the firm to implement a continuous market management approach that identifies performance constraints and provides measures to mitigate them. In this approach, the organization optimizes its products’ performance in the market, building a robust market presence. Additionally, this feature enables the company to enhance this performance and leverage new opportunities, leading to competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

Omni-channel marketing strategy offers numerous benefits to the company, enabling it to leverage market opportunities and increase corporate performance. First, omnichannel marketing integrates marketing analytics with cross channel insights, optimizing decision-making processes in the organization, and enhancing sales. Omni-channel marketing enables the firm to incorporate customer and corporate data across different departments. This integrated data management framework optimizes the business decision making processes, leading to enhanced sales, effective market performance, and targeted consumer marketing. Through this approach, the firm increases its strategic positioning and competitive advantage, leading to market dominance. Similarly, omnichannel marketing increases customer retention by building robust and personalized customer relationships that cultivate loyalty. The ability of omnichannel marketing to offer customized marketing approach that reflects specific consumer needs enables the firm to construct healthy relationships that enhance consumer base and increase the market share. This marketing approach allows the retailer to understand customer diversity, familiarize with the client’s unique needs, and build a rapport that seeks to meet these requirements. The continuous improvement of this relationship enables the company to retain these consumers and enhance its market share. For instance, a firm that focuses on its customers enables it to develop a personalized relationship that understands the clients’ cultural, racial, and geographical needs. Through this understanding, the firm tailors its products to address these specific needs raised by the customers.

Despite these benefits, omnichannel marketing experiences significant challenges at the corporate level. First, there are difficulties in tracking the customer journey across the departments, affecting business strategies’ ability to enhance marketing processes. Although this framework fosters data integration across different departments, there are issues in achieving this data governance. This limitation hinders firms’ ability to effectively optimize the role of omnichannel in attaining strategic corporate performance, leading to poor performance and inability to compete effectively. Secondly, there are issues in managing different marketing channels, compromising the firm’s ability to leverage this framework. The reliance on diverse marketing channels requires such corporations to develop robust, comprehensive, and integrated structures that aggregate data, streamline marketing, and ensure specificity in meeting consumer needs. However, this is not the case with most retailers due to their limited data governance frameworks and the inability to streamline enterprise operations. These hurdles affect this marketing strategy’s ability to meet corporate requirements, leading to wastage of organizational resources and inefficiency. Similarly, the integration of diverse channels in omnichannel marketing raises the need for technical expertise in managing such data framework. This feature hinders startups and small enterprises from effectively implementing this marketing framework due to resourcing constraints. Thus, omnichannel marketing has its limitations despite the numerous benefits yielded to corporations.

2.2.  Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is an immersive technology that enables users to interact with enhanced features of the real-world. In this technology, a digitally-enhanced environment is superimposed on the physical surroundings to create a custom situation that addresses specific user needs.[5] Such an environment involves the use of graphics, GPS overlays, audio, text, and video in augmented reality enriches the experience, providing an immersive and interactive environment. These components are effectively integrated into the user environment, providing seamless and robust navigation across the enhanced scenario. Users’ ability to interact with such a situation and reconfigure it to meet specific requirements differentiates it from virtual reality. Unlike augmented reality, virtual reality provides a virtual environment where the user engages with minimal adjustments. In such an environment, the user is disconnected from the physical environment and relies on the virtualized one for experience. However, this is not the situation in augmented reality, since the user integrates the physical and virtual environments to achieve robust scenery. In this approach, the underlying system overlays new information on top of the existing situation, enabling the user to leverage specific features and functionalities in the augmented environment. Thus, augmented reality integrates physical and virtual environments to establish a robust and immersive scenario.

Augmented reality has undergone significant progress since inception, enabling it to enhance its implementation and expand its functionalities. Augmented reality as a term was coined by David Mizell and Tom Caudell in 1990 when they were designing a head-mounted digital display.[6] This device was intended to enable workers to visualize the schematics of the plane while working wiring effectively.  However, there were earlier cases of augmented reality during the Second World War, where Mark VIII enabled British soldiers to determine if nearby planes were friendly. This military technology showed radar information on the fighter plane’s windshield.  In 1966, a head-mounted display was developed by Ivan Sutherland, merging reality with a computerized information. Sutherland built the first augmented system two years later using this head-mounted display.[7] Between the 1970s and 1990s, this field received significant interest, sparking progress, and advancement in the sector. As of 2000, the augmented reality experienced substantial breakthroughs with the emergence of AR games and other commercial applications built on this technology. Such advancement contributed to its rapid development during the time, with medical applications emerging as from 2007. The success achieved in these sectors has been replicated in other industries, increasing the implementation and adoption of augmented reality in society. Thus, augmented reality has effectively evolved in the community, enabling it to emerge as a significant influence in modern consumer engagement.

Augmented reality comprises of four main components that collectively provide the immersive and interactive environment enjoyed by the user. The first feature is the display that projects information to the user.[8] The display in augmented reality enables the user to understand the transformation of their environment and assess the suitability of such superimposition. Through this functionality, the screen allows the user to perceive digitally supplied information and reality, leading to robust interaction with the enhanced environment. The second component is the tracking device, which enables the user to align the data with requirements.[9] A tracking device in augmented reality ensures effective alignment of the system functionalities with the user requirements. This device enables the user to adjust the configurations of the environment in real-time and access the reconfigured scenario until their needs are met. The third element is the input device that handles user data, enabling them to modify the information presented in the display.[10] User input devices provide the primary interaction with the augmented reality system, allowing the users to adjust the settings of the enhanced environment to suit their needs. The last feature is the computer that handles the transformations and superimposition of data, providing an improved environment.[11] The computing devices in augmented reality handle data processing requirements that facilitate the enhanced scenario in the system. Thus, these components are instrumental in fostering user experience in augmented reality.

Augmented reality is increasingly implemented across all sectors in society, leading to pervasive solutions to enhance user interaction. For instance, it is implemented in the fashion industry, beauty, furniture, and home décor, enabling customers to visualize products before purchasing effectively.^[12] This extensive implementation of augmented reality is attributed to three main functionalities. First, augmented reality allows customers to visualize the experience of the product before purchasing.^[13] This feature reduces the ambiguities of e-commerce purchases, leading to a robust shopping experience. Further, this functionality enables customers to switch to their preferred products before purchasing, leading to informed decision making. Secondly, augmented reality provides a robust risk management framework by simplifying choices.^[14] This feature enables customers to make healthy choices regarding their products without post-purchase risks. This approach establishes a robust online shopping framework that adequately resolves the limitations of e-commerce platforms. Lastly, it provides virtual product isles that enable customers to select their preferred products like in brick-and-mortar shops effectively.^[15] This technology allows customers to interact with preferred products online, simulating the experience enjoyed in traditional outlets adequately. Through this functionality, it enhances the shopping experience, enabling customers to select their commodities effectively.

Augmented reality provides three main benefits to e-commerce platforms and online retailers. First, it fosters an immersive shopping experience across the online platform, enabling customers to move from observation to immersion.^[16] Augmented reality allows customers to interact with their environment through enhanced functionalities. This aspect increases customer engagement, leading to an immersive shopping experience. The ability of firms to leverage these features improves customer satisfaction, increasing brand loyalty, and building a robust customer base. Secondly, augmented reality reduces production costs in creative content, enabling firms to deploy robust marketing frameworks with minimal maintenance expenses.^[17] This technology allows the company to provide robust video prototyping tools that shorten the corporate environment’s product development process. This feature reduces the production costs, leading to the timely and efficient release of consumer goods. Lastly, augmented reality lowers the barriers of entry into the market.^[18] This technology’s ability to reduce production costs enables startups and small enterprises to easily penetrate new market frontiers, expand the consumer base, and build a robust market share. Such functionalities allow these firms to compete effectively with the existing companies and achieve effective positioning in the market.

Despite these benefits of augmented reality in e-commerce, some challenges hinder the effective implementation of this technology. First, these technologies require a stable internet connection to enable users to leverage their functionalities and optimize interaction with corporate products.^[19] Although internet connections have been deployed significantly across the country, there are locations that such links are unstable or unreliable. For instance, basement floors in buildings tend to have weak signals, reducing the integration of these systems with consumer needs. Additionally, weak or inconsistent lighting affects the ability of users to interact with these systems effectively. An extensively bright environment inhibits the ability to read the text, while little light affects visibility.[20] This influence of lighting requires users to adequately prepare their physical environment to integrate with the digital one. Lastly, most technologies that support augmented reality are in their infancy, limiting its features and functionalities. For instance, depth-sensing and tracking tools are in their infancy, limiting their functionalities in augmented reality. The limitations of these technologies increase the time spent in developing robust augmented reality systems, improving the overall expenses in deploying such frameworks.

2.3.  Immersive Marketing in the Fashion Industry

Omnichannel marketing and augmented reality are effectively integrated into the fashion industry to provide an immersive, interactive, and streamlined shopping experience. The integration of these strategies provides a novel approach of updating the wardrobe by empowering the customers to make informed decisions regarding their preferred apparel.^[21] For instance, innovative fashion companies have deployed augmented reality applications that enable customers to try out different clothing before purchasing. In such platforms, customers try different sizes, models, and shapes of their preferred products, allowing them to visualize their outlook in particular attire. Such innovations have led to numerous mobile applications providing immersive marketing content, leading to a pervasive marketing framework. The portability and personalization of these platforms offer an innovative and enhanced fashion shopping experience that addresses conventional retailers’ limitations. The ability to provide these functionalities enables brick-and-mortar shops to achieve strategic positioning in the e-commerce platforms, outperforming traditional online retailers. Through this approach, they have effectively bridged the gap between the benefits of brick-and-mortar shops and online shopping.^[22] Thus, the integration of augmented reality and omnichannel marketing in the fashion industry revolutionizes online shopping.

Augmented reality effectively leverages omnichannel components, enabling fashion firms to deploy robust marketing strategies. First, it offers a diverse marketing framework that increases customer engagement and expands the consumer base. Augmented reality enables consumers to access high quality marketing content that increases brand penetration and awareness. Through this exposure, the company grows its consumer base, increases customer conversion rate, and expands the market share. Additionally, this marketing strategy integrates video, audio, text, and multimedia content, increasing customer engagement, and product reviews. The ability of augmented reality to aggregate these marketing aspects offers an expanded advertising channel that enables the firm to achieve its strategic goals. Secondly, augmented reality provides an immersive shopping experience that mimics brick-and-mortar shops, leading to consistency and a smooth customer journey. The ability of this technology to allow shoppers to view their preferred products from the vendor’s site, examine features, and select them based on preferences offers a robust shopping framework compared to e-commerce platforms. Through such an enhanced shopping approach, customers extensively review available products and make informed decisions regarding their selected items, reducing potential returns of defective orders. This functionality effectively resolves the limitations of e-commerce platforms, enabling them to provide an immersive and comprehensive shopping experience that replicates brick-and-mortar shops.

Thirdly, augmented reality offers a customized and personalized shopping environment that enhances customer engagement and increases conversion rates. Omnichannel marketing strategies are intended to personalize marketing experience by providing a customized approach to user needs. Augmented reality leverages this feature by effectively addressing customer diversity and dynamics. Shoppers are allowed to select their preferred items and adjust them based on their specific needs. These functionalities offer an enhanced marketing environment that addresses specific concerns of the customer. Through this approach, customers are satisfied with the products they select from the vendor’s site, leading to a high conversion rate. Lastly, augmented reality optimizes the performance of corporate brands in the fashion industry. Popular e-commerce platforms rely on online shopping experience to attract, convert, and retain customers. Although these approaches increase market penetration and foster mobility of corporate products, they fail to provide an immersive shopping experience. As a result, there are high risks involved due to defective items and poor return policies. However, augmented reality enables customers to effectively select their preferred products, understand their shortcomings like in brick-and-mortar shops, and make informed decisions regarding them. Through this approach, augmented reality offers an optimized marketing framework that enhances the performance of fashion products.

The integration of omnichannel marketing and augmented reality in the fashion industry provides four significant benefits to these firms. First, they offer a robust customer engagement platform that enables apparel outlets to optimize customer interaction.^[23] The implementation of this technology in the fashion industry facilitates in-store navigation, allowing the customers to view a wide range of products from the vendor and select their preferred ones. Through this robust navigation, customers have access to detailed information regarding product listings and make informed decisions regarding their purchases. This feature leads to an immersive shopping experience that fosters customer engagement, leading to effective consumer relationship management. Secondly, augmented reality offers a personalized shopping experience that addresses specific consumer needs and meets market demands.^[24] Augmented reality leverages the targeted marketing strategies to provide a personalized online shopping experience that enables customers to access rich graphical content. The ability of customers to interact with these graphics simulates real-world experiences, allowing them to visualize their outlook under different scenarios. The information obtained from these user applications provides insights into customer preferences, enabling retailers to develop customized products that meet these requirements. Through this approach, the firm increases its sales, cultivates customer loyalty, and builds a reputable brand in the market.

Thirdly, augmented reality improves customer satisfaction, enhancing customer return rate. Augmented reality offers a comprehensive and immersive marketing environment that builds customer satisfaction.^[25] These platforms provide a wide range of tools that increase engagement, enable customers to view different products, and visualize the appearance of these items before purchasing them. This comprehensive marketing framework reduces risks associated with the online shopping experience, integrating brick-and-mortar shops with online exposure. Additionally, the personalized shopping experience provided by this framework fosters customer satisfaction and creates value for money, leading to a high conversion rate. The ability of the firm to use this information to enhance its products and services increase customer return rate, building brand loyalty, and improving the consumer base. Lastly, augmented reality offers a robust framework for content marketing, diversifying corporate market strategies, and increasing product awareness.^[26] This technology provides intuitive and interactive digital content that optimizes corporate marketing. The ability of customers to interact with this content increases customer engagement, leveraging features reserved in social media platforms. Through this approach, augmented reality compels customers to check out products, raising brand recognition and market awareness.

2.4.  Gaps in Knowledge

Despite the extensive research in augmented reality, there are concerns about its implementation at the corporate level. First, there are concerns about whether customers value the enhanced shopping environment than the price cuts.^[27] There are challenges in effectively determining what consumer needs, a phenomenon that reduces the ability of organizations to meet customer needs adequately. The inability of shoppers to conclusively express their market needs aggravates the situation, leading to continuous improvement and product innovation. Such limitations have negative impacts on augmented reality, potentially affecting its extensive implementation in the marketing environment. The second concern is whether this technology provides value to a wide range of customers.^[28] Although studies demonstrate the benefits linked with this technology, there are issues with its multi-segment adoption. This feature poses significant challenges in optimizing returns on investment at the enterprise level, affecting robust resource management. Lastly, there are concerns about whether this technology optimizes corporate profits independently.^[29] Fashion firms deploy diverse strategies to increase product awareness and enhance market penetration. Although augmented reality has effectively been integrated into these strategies, there are concerns about whether it effectively contributes to organizational productivity and profitability. This study addresses these research limitations, providing a robust framework for deploying augmented reality in the fashion industry.

3.     Research Methodology

3.1.  Research Design

The research methodology is instrumental in charting the framework for the study by determining the research worldview, design considerations, sample attributes, and techniques used to gather and analyze data. The research uses a descriptive design to examine augmented reality in the fashion industry. The use of a descriptive research design offers a robust assessment framework that understands the characteristics, features, and outcomes of a phenomenon.^[30] Although this research approach does not explain how these features emerge, it provides a comprehensive framework for detailing the attributes regarding the topic of study. Through this focus, it enhances the existing research regarding the fashion industry and provides a framework for future research to address how these factors emerge. The approach used to conduct this review is the cross-sectional framework, where data is collected and analyzed without factoring the historical performance of the study population.^[31] The use of a cross-sectional approach reduces the time required to effectively study the sample while ensuring comprehensive and robust research strategies. The implementation of this strategy in the study ensures that the data obtained from the field is reviewed and interpreted in a reasonable time, speeding up the research process. Thus, the cross-sectional strategy of descriptive design enhances offers a robust framework for evaluating the performance of augmented reality in the fashion industry.

Additionally, the study uses a mixed-methods approach to study the target population and integrate the findings with study objectives. This study approach integrates qualitative and quantitative strategies in the research process, providing a robust study framework.^[32] The qualitative techniques in the mixed methods approach extensively examine thoughts, concepts, and experiences, leading to in-depth insights on the study topic.  The data and insights obtained from this strategy are instrumental in understanding the behavior of augmented reality in the fashion industry and appreciate its role in society. On the other hand, quantitative approaches use statistical approaches to assess the topic. The data and insights obtained from this strategy are expressed in graphs and numbers, providing a reliable decision-making framework in the study. This framework offers a generalized assessment of the fashion industry, leading to an adequate understanding of the concept. The integration of these strategies incorporates the strengths of each structure and effectively addresses the limitations of individual approaches. This situation leads to a robust, reliable, and comprehensive study approach that effectively obtains data and insights regarding the implementation of augmented reality in the fashion industry. Through this approach, it effectively leverages the descriptive research design selected in the study.

The study population is selected through stratified random sampling to enhance generalization and reduce bias in findings obtained. The stratified sampling strategy ensures that the participants enrolled in the study meet specific requirements to improve the relevance of the results received.^[33] Through this approach, the study enhances the significance of the data obtained from the field, leading to a robust analysis and decision-making framework. There are 200 participants selected for the study, who were effectively segmented into customers and marketing teams. The customer teams focus on online shoppers with experience in augmented reality applications, while marketing teams are corporate employees in the marketing departments. Participants in the customer section are 140, while those in the marketing are 60, with each category enrolling members randomly across the states. The inclusion criteria for customer teams are individuals above twenty years, used e-commerce and traditional shopping frameworks, and exposed to augmented reality in the fashion industry. On the other hand, the inclusion criteria for the marketing segment are participants above twenty years, members of the marketing department in their company, and understand the use of augmented reality in the fashion industry. This segmentation of the sample population into customer and marketing segments enables the study to obtain comprehensive information regarding augmented reality from the customer and corporate perspectives.

There are ethical considerations integrated into the study to establish a robust research framework. First, participants provide informed consent before participating in the study. Before being enrolled, participants understand the intent of the study, data required to facilitate it, and how this information is handled during the research. Through this explanation, they make informed decisions about whether to participate in the study. Secondly, the study ensures the confidentiality of the participants and information obtained from them, establishing trust between the researcher and the sample population. The participants provide anonymous identifiers that conceal their identity and safeguard identifiable information. In this approach, the responses obtained from the participants are not uniquely traced to the individual respondent. Additionally, the data used in the study is not divulged to any other entity without the formal approval of the participants. This feature ensures that the participants have autonomy in how their data is shared with third parties. Further, it ensures that the data collected in the study is used for its intended purpose to protect participants from unintended outcomes of disclosure of such information. Thus, these ethical considerations ensure compliance with research expectations and protect the participants from possible victimization.

3.2.  Data Collection

The study uses online self-administered questionnaires to obtain data from the participants. These questionnaires integrate open-ended and close-ended questions to facilitate the collection of qualitative and quantitative information. There are benefits associated with this data collection framework. First, it enhances the response rate by ensuring participants provide information for the study at their convenience.^[34] Since these questionnaires are accessible online, the respondents provide information at their convenience, enabling them to participate in the survey effectively. Secondly, they have minimal costs to design and dispatch when compared to traditional reviews, a phenomenon that enhances user participation.^[35] Regular reviews require printed questionnaires, where participants fill in and submit their feedback. However, the recent outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic disrupts the efficiency of this strategy in obtaining data for the study. However, online self-administered questionnaires provide a robust alternative that complies with the health guidelines of physical distancing and reduced traveling. Thirdly, these questionnaires offer real-time access to participant’s data, enhancing data collection and analysis. Online surveys enable the participants to submit their responses in real-time, a feature that allows the researcher to access this data as is being filled by the participant. This phenomenon enhances data collection and analysis, reducing the time taken to aggregate data from the participants. Lastly, the lack of an interviewer in this survey framework enhances honesty among the participants. This aspect increases the reliability of the research findings and conclusions generated from such data.

Despite these benefits, there are limitations to this study approach. First, there might be cooperation challenges from the participants. There are situations when the participants fail to engage in the survey despite prior consent. However, this phenomenon is resolved by using a large population sample. If some of the participants fail to participate in the study, the data obtained is still statistically significant for analysis.  Secondly, there are possibilities of survey fraud where the respondents fail to provide accurate information. This feature reduces the validity and reliability of the study. Nevertheless, this feature is addressed through adequate participant engagement and counter-checks to ensure the data provided is reliable, accurate, and valid. Additionally, the questionnaire is designed to effectively resolve this phenomenon through questions that depend on feedback obtained from the previous ones. Through this approach, the survey enhances the reliability and validity of the respondent’s information. Lastly, there is a limited sampling time frame due to respondent availability. This phenomenon emerges from the reliance on internet connections to reach out to the participants and their tight schedules. However, this limitation is addressed through effective planning with individual participants to ensure the consistency of the study and timely data collection. Through these approaches, the research extensively resolves the limitations of online self-administered questionnaires.

3.3.  Data Analysis

There are two techniques used in analyzing data obtained from the participants. The first approach is a statistical analysis that relies on graphs and charts to examine relationships, identify patterns, and visualize information collected from the field.^[36] There are benefits associated with this analysis framework. First, it effectively identifies patterns and correlations, optimizing decision making, and data inference. The ability of statistical analysis to identify and visualize relationships offers an informed analysis framework, leading to reliable conclusions on the data.  Secondly, it is easy to integrate into the research and validate the findings obtained from the study.[37] Statistical analysis provides robust data summaries that offer insights on frequencies, the behavior of the participants, and other relevant information. Such insights enable the researcher to ascertain the relevance and reliability of user feedback, providing practical analysis for the study. Thirdly, the ideas obtained from this analysis approach are easily generalized over large populations. The statistical analysis relies on mathematical data entries to examine the study question. This feature provides a robust framework for data generalization in a large sample. However, this technique does not check data validity; imitating data in different scenarios addresses this limitation. Through this approach, data reliability and validity are ascertained in the study.

The other technique is testing the hypotheses developed at the beginning of the study. Testing the hypothesis offers a robust framework to ascertain whether the study deviated from the initial projections. There are benefits associated with this framework. First, it provides a statistical approach to concluding the data. The integration of mathematical functions in hypothesis testing enables the researcher to make informed decisions regarding the data and provide reliable conclusions. Secondly, it simplifies the data analysis process by using samples instead of the general population. This feature effectively integrates with the statistical analysis framework, optimizing the reliability and relevance of insights from the data. On the other hand, there are limitations to this framework. For instance, it requires an appropriate interpretation of data to make intelligent decisions. The integration of statistical analysis in the research effectively addresses this phenomenon, leading to a robust decision-making framework. Further, this framework does not explain the rationale behind the data attributes, limiting its implementation in descriptive research. Nevertheless, the use of statistical analysis resolves this weakness by offering patterns and relationships in data. Through these approaches, the limitations of hypothesis testing are adequately addressed in the study, leading to a robust analysis framework.

4.     Results

TBD

5.     Discussion

5.1.  Data Analysis

TBD

5.2.  Review of Research Questions

TBD

5.3.  Hypothesis Testing

TBD

6.     Recommendations and Conclusion

6.1.  Recommendations

TBD

6.2.  Application

TBD

6.3.  Conclusion

TBD

7.     References

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Hair, Joseph F. Essentials of business research methods. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2015.

Hall, Stefan, and Ryo Takahashi. “Augmented and virtual reality: The promise and peril of immersive technologies.” McKinsey & Company. Last modified October 3, 2017. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/augmented-and-virtual-reality-the-promise-and-peril-of-immersive-technologies.

Hirschfeld, Andy. “Augmented reality is going to change how you update your wardrobe.” Observer. Last modified February 11, 2020. https://observer.com/2020/02/augmented-reality-retailers-asos-gap-smart-mirrors-mobile-apps/

Joshi, Naveen. “Retailers have a lot to gain from AR and VR.” Forbes. Last modified October 1, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/10/01/retailers-have-a-lot-to-gain-from-ar-and-vr/#58f647237a1c

Payne, Elizabeth Manser, James W. Peltier, and Victor A. Barger. “Omni-channel marketing, integrated marketing communications, and consumer engagement.” Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 11, no. 2 (2017): 185-197.

Rigby, Darrell K., Mikey Vu, and Asit Goel. “4 questions retailers need to ask about augmented reality.” Harvard Business Review. Last modified April 18, 2019. https://hbr.org/2019/04/4-questions-retailers-need-to-ask-about-augmented-reality.

Scholz, Joachim, and Andrew N. Smith. “Augmented reality: Designing immersive experiences that maximize consumer engagement.” Business Horizons 59, no. 2 (2016): 149-161.

Sekaran, Uma, and Roger Bougie. Research methods for business: A skill-building approach. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016.

Sharma, Rahul. “Real deals: How augmented reality is revolutionizing e-commerce.” Tech Genix. Last modified June 12, 2018. http://techgenix.com/augmented-reality-ecommerce/

Sheldon, Peter. “Augmented reality in retail: Virtually try before you buy.” Technology Review. Last modified October 23, 2019. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/23/238473/augmented-reality-in-retail-virtual-try-before-you-buy/

8.     Appendix

8.1.  Customer Questionnaire

1. Do you use augmented reality in online shopping for apparel?
2. Do you think augmented reality applications reduce the need to visit physical outlets?
3. Are the current augmented reality applications effective in product information?
4. What is your primary factor during shopping? Is it price cuts or product visualization? Why?
5. What is your view of augmented reality applications over physical shops? Are they effective in meeting consumer needs?
6. What are your expectations of augmented reality in the fashion industry?
   1. Detailed product information
   2. Interactive and responsive digital content
   3. Rich virtualized content with robust animations
   4. Practical content integrating try-on and accurate sizes
7. Assessment of current augmented reality applications
   1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the current augmented reality platforms?
   2. What do you think is the major weakness of these platforms?
   3. How can firms address these weaknesses of augmented reality platforms?

8.2.  Questionnaire for Sales Managers

1. Does the company use augmented reality applications in marketing?
2. How does augmented reality perform over other marketing strategies such as social media, print, TV, and radio?
3. Based on the current performance of augmented reality in the company or other companies, do you think it is effective in achieving sales targets?
4. What do you think is the primary factor during shopping? Is it price cuts or product visualization? Why?
5. What is your view of augmented reality applications over physical shops? Are they effective in meeting consumer needs?
6. What are your expectations of augmented reality in the fashion industry?
   1. Detailed product information
   2. Interactive and responsive digital content
   3. Rich virtualized content with robust animations
   4. Practical content integrating try-on and accurate sizes
7. Assessment of current augmented reality applications
   1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the current augmented reality platforms?
   2. What do you think is the major weakness of these platforms?
   3. How can firms address these weaknesses of augmented reality platforms?

[1] Joachim Scholz and Andrew N. Smith, “Augmented reality: Designing immersive experiences that maximize consumer engagement,” Business Horizons 59, no. 2 (2016): 149.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Elizabeth Manser Payne, James W. Peltier, and Victor A. Barger, “Omni-channel marketing, integrated marketing communications, and consumer engagement.” Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 11, no. 2 (2017): 189.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Joachim Scholz and Andrew N. Smith. “Augmented reality: Designing immersive experiences that maximize consumer engagement,” Business Horizons 59, no. 2 (2016): 149

[6] Donna R. Berryman, “Augmented reality: a review,” Medical Reference Services Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2012): 213.

[7] Ibid; 214.

[8] Berryman, “Augmented reality,” Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 214.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Peter Sheldon, “Augmented reality in retail: Virtually try before you buy,” MIT Technology Review, last modified October 23, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/23/238473/augmented-reality-in-retail-virtual-try-before-you-buy/.

[13] Rahul Sharma, “Real deals: How augmented reality is revolutionizing e-commerce,” Tech Genix, last modified June 12, 2018, http://techgenix.com/augmented-reality-ecommerce/.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Stefan Hall and Ryo Takahashi, “Augmented and virtual reality: The promise and peril of immersive technologies,” McKinsey & Company, last modified October 3, 2017, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/augmented-and-virtual-reality-the-promise-and-peril-of-immersive-technologies.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Christopher Detzel et al., “Rolling out augmented reality in the field,” Boston Consulting Group, last modified November 05, 2018, https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/rolling-out-augmented-reality-field.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Andy Hirschfeld, “Augmented reality is going change how you update your wardrobe,” Observer, last modified February 11, 2020, https://observer.com/2020/02/augmented-reality-retailers-asos-gap-smart-mirrors-mobile-apps/

[22] Ibid.

[23] Naveen Joshi, “Retailers have a lot to gain from AR and VR,” Forbes, last modified October 1, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/10/01/retailers-have-a-lot-to-gain-from-ar-and-vr/#58f647237a1c.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Darrell K. Rigby, Mikey Vu, and Asit Goel, “4 questions retailers need to ask about augmented reality,” Harvard Business Review, last modified April 18, 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/04/4-questions-retailers-need-to-ask-about-augmented-reality.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Joseph F Hair, Essentials of business research methods (Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2015), 148.

[31] Ibid; 149.

[32] Emma Bell, Alan Bryman, and Bill Harley, Business research methods (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018), 569.

[33] Uma Sekaran, and Roger Bougie, Research methods for business: A skill-building approach (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 244.

[34] Bell, Bryman, and Harley, Business research methods, 232.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid; 569.

[37] Ibid.