Augmenting the reality of decision-making: Comparing and combining product experiences’ influence on choice difficulty and mental imagery

Companies are increasingly adopting augmented reality (AR) to provide new virtual product experiences for consumers. Despite practical and academic interest, AR’s potential to reduce the negative effects of choice overload remains largely unexplored. Drawing on cognitive load theory, this article compares and combines AR with a more indirect product experience (i.e., physical product swatches) to examine the relationships between mental imagery, choice difficulty, choice confidence, and purchase intention while considering decision-making style as a moderator. The results show that AR, especially static AR, enhances mental imagery and that this imagery is key in influencing choice difficulty and confidence. However, difficulty can also be reduced by combining AR with a more traditional indirect product experience. Furthermore, mental imagery and choice difficulty influence choice confidence, subsequently affecting purchase intentions. Only for people with a maximizing decision-making style was a direct effect of choice difficulty on purchase intention found. The results contribute to choice overload and AR literature by demonstrating how AR’s virtual experience affects decision-making and, more specifically, choice difficulty.