This book investigates how consumers evaluate product packaging in Virtual Reality (VR) compared to Physical Reality (PR). It explores whether immersive environments can elicit responses similar to real-world settings, focusing on packaging s structural, haptic, and visual cues. Through a cue-based approach and empirical studies, it assesses consumers' perceptions, attitudes, and intentions, such as perceived sustainability, willingness to pay, purchase intention, and more. The volume bridges packaging design, sustainability, and consumer behavior in immersive environments, offering actionable insights for researchers and professionals in marketing, product development, and digital innovation. It positions VR as a valid tool for packaging evaluation and testing, contributing to both academic discourse and practical applications in prototyping and sustainable design.
1. Introduction.- 2. Virtual Reality in marketing: consumer and product research.- 3. Packaging design, sustainability and the consumer perspective.- 4. Research design and methodology.- 5. Preliminary study and main experiments procedure.- 6. Study 1 Consumers response to structural cues.- 7. Study 2 Consumers response to haptic cues.- 8. Study 3 Consumers response to visual cues.- 9. Discussions, implications and limitations of the research.- 10. Conclusions.
Generoso Branca is a Post-Doc Researcher in the Department of Marketing at Bocconi University, Italy, and a Fellow in Marketing Management at SDA Bocconi School of Management, Italy, where he is also a member of the Channel & Retail Lab. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sannio, Italy, along with a Doctor Europaeus Certificate. His research interests include consumer behavior, sustainability, diversity and inclusion in the marketplace, and immersive technologies. He has published in international peer-reviewed journals such as Psychology & Marketing, and has received distinctions including second place for the Best Doctoral Thesis SIM-BNL Award 2023, the Best Reviewer Award 2023 and the Best Article 2024 Award from the Italian Journal of Marketing. He teaches courses in marketing, channel marketing, trade marketing, channel management, and sustainability.
