In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the application of ICT technology has brought many changes in society. In particular, the paradigm shift of consumer shopping, which customers experience through the incorporation of new technologies in the shopping environment, is also bring a big change of shopping behavior. In this study, we implemented a virtual reality shopping environment, a form of new distribution channel, and then attempted to find out the user’s time distortion and enjoyment as well as the future intention of using VR by allowing the respondents to experience the VR shopping. In addition, this study examines the mediation role of time distortion between telepresence and interactivity, and enjoyment. Managerial implications and limitations of the results of this study are also discussed.

Introduction The Fourth Industrial Revolution brings a great change in the retail market through combining new digital technologies, such as data clouding, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality(VR) technology. The Alibaba group, which is in charge of 90% market share in China, announced a new Virtual Reality (VR) shopping mall, Buyplus, and Alibaba expected that VR will improve shoppers’ engagement and will experience the joy of shopping mall at home. The potential power of VR shopping mall in Korea is recently acknowledged by the Korean government and Korean government developed the full scale VR shopping mall for the first time in Korea. The VR shopping mall is expected to be a new paradigm of distribution channel industry by incorporating some advanced digital technologies. Conceptual Background In previous study, Pelet et al. (2017) investigated the optimal flow experience enhanced by the telepresence in social media. The overall flow provides a unique immersion experience for social media users, also the frequency of use and time distortion were affected during the use of the system. Choi and Choi (2016) conducted a study and they showed that telepresence was one of the important factors in the new technology-based marketing environment. Limioid Theory is explaining a psychological process when user enters into a new situation. Users have to decide how to expand and act on their own in a new situation, so users quickly fall into new situation and want to transit successfully (Huang & Liao, 2017). Virtual Reality shopping with new technology will bring a new marketing paradigm in the future. The purpose of this study is to analyze users’ telepresence and other underlying factors of behavioral intention of VR shopping. To achieve this primary goal, first, we investigated the factors of VR shopping psychology—such as telepresence, challenge, body ownership, and control for VR shopping. We also tried to investigate the factors of perceived value VR shopping - such as playfulness and usefulness by applying the Flow Theory and Virtual Liminoid Theory. Second, we analyzed the relationships between the factors of perceived value and the behavior intention VR shopping by applying the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). This study suggests the moderating effects of technology readiness and time distortion between telepresence and playfulness. Model Testing and Conclusion In this study, we developed the virtual reality supermarket which is operated by headmounted VR glasses and body sensors with the help of VR technology start-up company. Total 120 university students participated and experienced the VR shopping. By using the structural equation model, research hypotheses were tested and most research hypotheses were statistically significant and accepted. The final research model also showed the statistical significance with the goodness-of-fit indices. We tried to analyze the moderating effects of time distortion and technology readiness between telepresence and playfulness. We also found that there is a moderating effect of time distortion between body control and playfulness. As a result of model testing, we found that playfulness and usefulness are the major mediators between the underlying factors of VR shopping and behavioral intention of VR shopping. The results of this study about VR shopping explain how retail and marketing managers can operate VR shopping store in the technology-based future retail environment. The managerial implications of the study results for the corporate marketing managers and the limitations of the study were also discussed.