dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates how business models in the tourism industry will be affected by the
rapid emergence of virtual reality technology. The research is based on data gathered from two
experiments, one in a lab- and one in a field environment, conducted in the fall of 2016. The
implications are considered from a combination of statistical analysis and existing literature.
We have examined how effects from advertisement media differ when it is displayed to
participants as pictures on a smartphone, compared to those 360-degree images displayed in a
virtual reality head mount. The existing literature suggests that the immersive nature of virtual
reality should have a positive effect on customers’ willingness to buy, as the risk linked with
not being able to properly evaluate the quality of the experience goods should be reduced. Our
data has not found support for this claim directly. The only significant finding we have in this
regard, is that exposure to virtual reality leads to changes in other dependent variables that are
associated with the actual purchase. This finding is only significant when looking through
several mediating variables, suggesting that the actual effect is very limited. Our findings do,
however, suggest that there might be other implications for business models in the tourism
industry. Namely, we found that the use of virtual reality increases the perceived access to
information about the quality of the product for the customers. This would theoretically suggest
that the risk associated with purchasing the trip is reduced, but we have not been able to confirm
this claim statistically. We also found that the perceived quality of the images is better when
viewed in 2D than in the virtual reality head mount, but that the participants enjoyed viewing
the images more when they looked at them in virtual reality. According to the existing
literature, the implications of these findings are that the effects of virtual reality should be
higher as the technology improves, and that virtual reality might have value to players in the
tourism industry as an integrated part of their value proposition. In conclusion, this research
provides critical insights on the limited potential of virtual reality as means to increase
customer acquisition, using the confines of our experiments, and contributes to a better
foundation for predicting its uses and future implications in the tourism industry. | nb_NO |