The impact of augmented reality on impulse buying of makeup products on e-commerce platforms

The trend towards online shopping and the growing demand for makeup products among Vietnamese women have created both opportunities and fierce competition for e-commerce businesses in the makeup sector. To stand out, businesses need innovative strategies to capture attention and trigger purchase responses from customers. This study aims to explore how Augmented Reality (AR) influences customers’ hedonic values and then leads their impulse buying, based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) theory. By employing a quantitative method, 209 responses from Vietnamese female customers were gathered and then analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with SPSS and AMOS software. The findings of this study indicate that four AR characteristics, including product informativeness (β = 0.538, p = 0.000), interactivity (β = 0.377, p = 0.000), vividness (β = 0.291, p = 0.000), novelty (β = 0.163, p = 0.027) positively affect customers’ hedonic value. Subsequently, customers’ hedonic value demonstrates a significant positive effect on their online impulse buying (β = 0.567, p = 0.000). Furthermore, the results also show that hedonic value plays a perfect mediator in the relationships between AR characteristics and online impulse buying. The findings of this study also provide managerial implications for firms in the makeup sector using AR effectively on e-commerce platforms to benefit from enhancing impulse buying.