Influence of a virtual reality café context on specialty coffee consumers’ willingness to pay and purchase preference
(Room 25 AB)
12 Apr 26
10:00 AM
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10:45 AM
This talk explores how a virtual reality (VR) café environment influences specialty coffee consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP), liking and purchase preferences. Coffee is rarely experienced in isolation; the ambience, service style, and surrounding cues all shape how people perceive coffee quality and value. Using immersive VR technology, our research simulated a café context to understand how environmental context can change the choices specialty coffee consumers make in comparison with a neutral environment, even when the coffee itself remains the same. This study further assessed how liking and purchase preferences are affected by environmental context. This research provides insight into how much context truly matters, whether environments influence perceived coffee value and WTP, and how VR can serve as a powerful, cost-effective tool for testing café concepts or product launches before investing in physical spaces.