What you see is what you get: VR as a tool for travel experiences trials

Abstract
Understanding customers' motivations is not an easy task, for that reason this article focus to study deep meanings in virtual reality (VR) experiences as accounted by users who have recently had VR experiences through video-stimuli. VR refers to audio and video productions of scenarios that overlap the actual reality in some special way. For this purpose, a projective technique was used: the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET) which relies on visual-only stimuli - such as photography-to draw metaphors. We adapted this technique to the VR realms in order to explore meanings and responses as psychosocial states. Our aim was to better understand our potential customers on four dimensions. Taking into account a sample of 35 undergraduate students and a very recent VR stimulus, different sets of constructs were categorised into a hierarchy map with the following dimensions: emotional consequences (positive: tranquility, joy, euphoria; negative: fear, despair), gadget attributes (weight, easiness to use), physio-psychosocial responses (dizziness and disorientation) and values (happiness, freedom). Implications for marketers and stakeholders in general range from branding VR to delivering brand value as a means to offer positive experiences to users.