A NARRATIVE REVIEW OF NEUROMARKETING TECHNIQUES FOR ELEVATING CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY SHOPPING ENVIRONMENTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/AIJBES.829113Keywords:
Consumer Engagement, Consumer Neuroscience, Immersive Retail, Neuromarketing, Virtual Reality ShoppingAbstract
In the context of the shift from spatial e-commerce to immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences, the interpreting of non-conscious consumer processes in terms of visual attention distribution, cognitive load, emotional arousal, and behavioral response becomes essential for developing effective strategies in retail. Nevertheless, the present body of knowledge lacks cohesion since the prior review literature fails to propose a continuum between the factors of VR spatial design, neuromarkers of consumer reaction in real-time, decision-making by consumers, and ethical guidelines for managing the latter. To address this multidimensional problem, the following narrative review provides a qualitative synthesis of the empirical and theoretical literature published in the Scopus database during 2021-2025. The literature review is conducted within four principal themes, namely neuromarkers of VR shoppers' reactions, decoding through neuroimaging and biometrics, visual attention and spatial ergonomics through eye-tracking technology, multisensory immersion and social presence, and AI-driven neuro-adaptive retailing. The synthesis reveals that multimodal physiological measurement, such as concurrent electroencephalography, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, and eye-tracking, can offer more complex and possibly more accurate measures of cognitive states changes than traditional self-reports. At the same time, there exists a tension that, while multisensory immersion through high-fidelity cues and virtual touch improves the psychological telepresence of shoppers, uncalibrated environmental complexity may cause extraneous cognitive load. The present paper contributes a framework that maps out the characteristics of VR rendering and interactions to the intermediate processes and final consumer outcomes, thus providing a structure for development of spatial-ergonomic principles. In addition, the present review tackles the issues of ethics and governance related to neural data privacy, informed consent, data ownership, mental states inference, and reuse of the secondary data.
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