Assessing the determinants of metaverse adoption for E-commerce retailing

The advent of metaverse technology has impacted the retail sector, shaping e-commerce platforms into a new form of metaverse-based online shopping environments. The metaverse e-commerce experience is new to shoppers, making it crucial to comprehend consumer reactions to this technology in the context of retail. This study explores the shopping intention and potential use of the metaverse for shopping using the UTAUT2 model and metaverse-based context-specific antecedents. Using a structured questionnaire, data from 1340 consumers were collected and analyzed through PLS-SEM. The findings indicated that factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, and facilitating conditions influence shopping intention in the e-commerce metaverse. The metaverse-related antecedents, namely, a sense of immersion and imagination, have a positive influence, whereas technological anxiety and perceived security and privacy concerns have a negative impact on e-commerce shopping intention in the metaverse. It was also found that shopping intention influences the potential use of metaverse for shopping and that stickiness to traditional shopping negatively moderates this relationship. This unique research explores consumer buying behavior in the metaverse. It provides marketers, e-commerce managers, designers, and developers of metaverse platforms with the antecedents of the potential use of the metaverse for shopping insights. Consumer policymakers can also draw insights from this study.