6533b7ddfe1ef96bd1274aab

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Scaling Consultative Selling with Virtual Reality: Design and Evaluation of Digitally Enhanced Services

Osmo MattilaJani HolopainenTuure TuunanePetri Parvinen

subject

Customer engagement4112 ForestryProcess (engineering)Computer science05 social sciencesVirtual realityPhase (combat)Virtual realityMixed realityFramework for evaluation in design scienceHuman–computer interactionScale (social sciences)0502 economics and businessConsultative selling050211 marketingUse case512 Business and ManagementNatural resource managementDesign science research methodology050203 business & management

description

Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies allow creation of powerful customer experiences and illustrative demonstrations especially in use cases that benefit from spatial visualizations. Our study focuses on the natural resource management sector and digitalizing of consultative selling process. More specifically, we look at how to improve customer engagement with the use of virtual reality (VR) and thus digitally scale consultative selling. In this process, a VR application is used to demonstrate various management operations and their economic results. Design research methodology is applied to a pre-development phase and three application development iterations between 2016 and 2018. Data consists of user interviews and video observations (N = 129) during various development iterations and three application development plans. The results show that VR offers an emotionally engaging and illustrative tool in consultative selling. Further, it opens a novel way for interaction between the salesperson and customer and possibilities to scale consultative selling digitally, emphasizing the role of trust. Peer reviewed

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2018-09-21
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00713-3_29