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Firms increasingly seek to improve the online shopping experience by enabling customers to exchange product recommendations through social augmented reality (AR). We utilize socially situated cognition theory and conduct a series of five studies to explore how social AR supports shared decision making in recommender-decision maker dyads. We demonstrate that optimal configurations of social AR, that is, a static (vs. dynamic) point-of-view sharing format matched with an image-enhanced (vs. text-only) communicative act, increase recommenders' comfort with providing advice and decision makers' likelihood of using the advice in their choice. For both, these effects are due to a sense of social empowerment, which also stimulates recommenders' desire for a product and positive behavioral intentions. However, recommenders' communication motives impose boundary conditions. When recommenders have strong impression management concerns, this weakens the effect of social empowerment on recommendation comfort. Furthermore, the stronger a recommender's persuasion goal, the less likely the decision maker is to use the recommendation in their choice., Author(s): Tim Hilken [sup.1] , Debbie I. Keeling [sup.2] , Ko de Ruyter [sup.3] [sup.4] , Dominik Mahr [sup.1] [sup.5] , Mathew Chylinski [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.5012.6, 0000 0001 [...]

Driven by the proliferation of augmented reality (AR) technologies, many firms are pursuing a strategy of service augmentation to enhance customers' online service experiences. Drawing on situated cognition theory, the authors show that AR-based service augmentation enhances customer value perceptions by simultaneously providing simulated physical control and environmental embedding. The resulting authentic situated experience, manifested in a feeling of spatial presence, functions as a mediator and also predicts customer decision comfort. Furthermore, the effect of spatial presence on utilitarian value perceptions is greater for customers who are disposed toward verbal rather than visual information processing, and the positive effect on decision comfort is attenuated by customers' privacy concerns., Author(s): Tim Hilken [sup.1] , Ko de Ruyter [sup.2] , Mathew Chylinski [sup.3] , Dominik Mahr [sup.1] [sup.4] , Debbie I. Keeling [sup.5] Author Affiliations: (1) Department of Marketing and [...]