Article Review

Submit  a one page review for each article. Each review should be one page, double spaced. The review should be a ½ page summary of the article, and a ½ page application of the material to the real world. Details about each review’s requirements are posted in the assignment instructions section.

Available -,, online at www.sciencedirect.com
Journalof

•;;- ScienceDirect CONSUMER
PSYCHOLOGY

ELSEVIER Journal of Consumer Psychology 21 (2011) 49- 56

Motivating consumer behavior by subliminal conditioning in the absence of
basic needs: Striking even while the iron is cold

Martijn Veltkamp a,*, Ruud Custers b, Henk Aarts b

a University ofTwente, Department of Marketing Communication and Consumer Psychology, PO Box 217, 7500AE Enschede, The Netherlands
b Utrecht University, Department of Social Psychology, PO Box 80140, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Received 30 December 2009; revised 25 August 20 IO;accepted 21 September 20 I0
Available online 15 October 2010

Abstract

Previous research suggests that priming of behavioral concepts (e.g., drinking water) motivates consumers outside conscious awareness, but
only if primes match a current need (e.g., fluid deprivation). The present article reports two studies testing whether subliminal conditioning
(subliminally priming a behavioral concept and linking it to positive affect) can motivate such need-related behaviors even in the absence of
deprivation. Both studies showed an interaction effect: Motivation to drink water increased with fluid deprivation, and subliminally conditioning
drinking water more positive only motivated drinking in the absence of deprivation. Furthermore, Study 2 suggests that motivation resulting from
conditioning is more specific than following deprivation, as only the latter can be reduced by pursuing alternative behaviors (i.e., eating high­
liquid foods). Thus, although traditionally the motivation for need-related behaviors is thought to depend on deprivation, this research shows
subliminal conditioning can motivate consumers as if they were deprived.
© 2010 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier lnc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Deprivation; Conditioning; Motivation; Subliminal persuasion; Priming

An important question in consumer psychology is to
understand how environmental cues such as commercials, role
models or slogans can motivate consumers to perform specific
behaviors such as buying a particular brand of coke or eating a
healthy sandwich. The question of whether such environmental
cues can also motivate consumers outside their conscious
awareness has interested psychologists to an equal – if not
larger – degree. Probably the most famous research example
addressing this question is that of James Vicary. He claimed
already in the fifties of the last century that priming “drink
Coke” and “eat popcorn” on a cinema screen outside visitors’
awareness (i.e., subliminally) increased their motivation to buy
and consume these products.

Although Vicary’s claims were later exposed as a publicity
hoax, recent experimental studies have found support for the

* Corresponding author. Fax: +31 534894259.
E-mail addresses: m.veltkamp@utwente.nl (M. Veltkamp), r.custers@uu.nl

(R. Custers), h.aarts@uu.nl (H. Aarts).

effect of subliminal priming on consumer behavior. Karremans
and colleagues found that subliminally priming people with
the brand name of a thirst-quenching beverage increased
people’s choice for that beverage (Karremans, Stroebe, &
Claus, 2006), but only when people were thirsty. Strahan,
Spencer, and Zanna (2002) found that subliminally priming
people simply with words related to drinking also increased
fluid consumption in a taste task, but again only if participants
were fluid deprived. Finally, Bermeitinger et al. (2009)
showed that presenting people with the brand name of a
dextrose pill motivated people’s intake of those pills, but only
for people who were tired and hence needed an energy boost.
These studies suggest that Vicary’s ideas were partly right
after all. Subliminally priming consumers with behaviors
related to eating or drinking does influence their consumption,
but only if people are already deprived. Priming effects on
consumption, then, seem to be dependent on basic needs such
as hunger and thirst. Indeed, Strahan et al. (2002) concluded
that when it comes to motivating consumption by means of
subliminal primes, one needs to strike while the iron is hot.

1057-7408/$ – see front matter© 2010 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi: 10.1016/j.jcps.2010.09.01 I

https://10.1016/j.jcps.2010.09.01

mailto:h.aarts@uu.nl

mailto:r.custers@uu.nl

mailto:m.veltkamp@utwente.nl

www.sciencedirect.com

50 M. Veltkamp el al. I Journal o/Con,umer P.1ycJzology 21 (201 I) 49–56

However, for other types of behavior, deprivation does not
seem to be required for priming effects to occur. Priming people
with achievement has been found to increase performance and
persistence ofbehavior (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee Chai, Barndollar,
& Trotschel, 2001), even when primes are presented subliminally
(Hart & Albarracin, 2009). In the consumer domain, subliminally
priming retail brands associated with a thrift goal (i.e., Wal-Mart)
was found to make consumers more motivated to behave in
accordance with this goal; they preferred lower-priced products
over more prestigious (and expensive) alternatives (Chartrand,
Huber, Shiv, & Tanner, 2008). Similarly, Brasel and Gips (2011)
showed that a “Red Bull” prime, a brand associated with speed
and risk taking, motivated participants to go as fast as possible and
take more risks in a racing game. Apparently, behaviors such as
achieving or saving money motivate behavior when primed
because they are desired in their own right (for an overview, see,
e.g., Dijksterhuis, Chartrand, & Aart<;, 2007).

Recently, it has been argued that the reason that primed goals
affect motivation out<;ide of awareness is that goals are represented in people's minds as desirable and that priming such goals activates a positive affective tag that functions as a reward signal (Custers & Aarts, 2010). As a result, subliminally priming a behavior together with positive affect motivates people to engage in that behavior, effectively creating a behavioral goal by means of subliminal conditioning (Aarts, Custers, & Marien, 2008; Custers & Aarts, 2005). This suggests that creating associations between behavior and positive affect through conditioning may actually motivate consumption of articles that are usually motivated by deprivation (e.g., drinks or food), even in the absence of actual deprivation, and out<;ide conscious awareness. In the present paper, we test this intriguing hypothesis. That is, we investigate the effect of subliminal conditioning on consumption and investigate how these effects may differ from those of deprivation.

Differences and similarities between motivation resulting
from deprivation and subliminal conditioning

It is widely known that motivation to obtain resources
crucial for survival (e.g., fluid, food, or social contact)
fluctuates with deprivation. While motivation is high when
people are deprived, it is eliminated when resources arc
replenished (McDougall, l 908; Murray, 1938; see also Pittman
& Zeigler, 2007). This mechanism is to a large extent the result
of learning. It is assumed that very early in childhood, people
learn that performing a specific behavior (e.g., drinking) is
rewarding given that there is a state of deprivation (incentive
theory, e.g., Berridge, 2007; Toates, 1986; Veltkamp, Aarts, &
Custers, 2009), but not when such deprivation is absent. This
does not mean that determining whether performing this
behavior is rewarding requires much elaboration. Seibt,
Hafner, and Deutsch (2007), for instance, demonstrated that
the automatic affective reactions to food become more positive
with people’s level of deprivation. Hence, the reward value of
objects or actions that can lift the state of deprivation (e.g.,
eating bread, drinking coke) becomes more positive with
deprivation and returns to zero after resources are replenished
and the deprivation is lifted. The reward value of actions that

are crucial for the well-being of an individual is therefore
shaped by deprivation through a learned relation between
deprivation and reward value. Hence, motivation for behaviors
that lift a state of deprivation increase or diminish with the level
of deprivation. Not surprisingly then, this is exactly what is
found in studies where behaviors and products that are related
to deprivation are subliminally primed (Bcrmeitinger et al.,
2009; Karremans et al., 2006; Strahan et al., 2002; Veltkamp,
Aarts, & Custers, 2008a).

Such fluctuations in motivation depending on deprivation
are not expected, though, when motivation results from
subliminal conditioning. According to the literature on
evaluative conditioning (for an overview, see De Houwer,
Thomas, & Baeyens, 2001 ), merely pairing a to be conditioned
stimulus (CS) with positive or negative stimuli (US) causes
changes in the valence of the CS. This can also motivate
behavior. For example, subliminally co-activating an originally
neutral behavior like doing puzzles with positively valenced
words has been shown to increase the motivation for that
specific behavior outside awareness: Participants were found to
be more eager to actually perform puzzles (Custers & Aarts,
2005) and to obtain puzzles (Veltkamp, Aarts, & Custers,
2008b). These changes in the valence of the CS are relatively
stable over time. For instance, this type of conditioning has
been found to be highly resistant to extinction, in that
presenting the CS without the US after conditioning does not
eliminate the conditioning effects (De Houwer et al., 200 l ).
Hence, it is expected that the motivating effects of subliminal
conditioning on behavior (Custers & Aarts, 2005; Aarts et al.,
2008) would be insensitive to changes in deprivation, and
create a long-lasting link between deprivation-related beha­
viors ( e.g., drinking) and positive affect. Thus, consumers
should be motivated to perform such behaviors following
subliminal conditioning even in the absence of deprivation.
This idea was tested in Study 1.

If subliminal conditioning is able to motivate behavior when
deprivation is low, an important question becomes what happens if
deprivation is high during conditioning. Would subliminal
conditioning be redundant for people who are deprived? A possible
answer to this question can be found when one considers the
hierarchical structures in which behavior is organized. Previous
research suggests that many behaviors are part of goal structures
(Aart<; & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Kruglanski et aL, 2002), where multiple lower-order goals are related to attaining one higher-order goal. According to this view, reducing deprivation (e.g., thirst) could be seen as a higher-order goal that can in theory be attained by various means (e.g., drinking a beverage, eating cucumber). How­ ever, creating an association between drinking and positive affect would result in a lower-order goal that could only be fulfilled by means of drinking. Such a motivation, then, would be very specific and pertain directly to the behavior and not to a higher-order goal.

Taken together, the hierarchy structure of goals perspective
suggest<; that subliminal conditioning is effective for high deprived individuals as well, because it creates motivation on a more specific behavioral level. These effects should become apparent if people are allowed to attain the higher-order goal (i.e., reducing deprivation) without performing the focal behavior

51 M Veltkamp et al. I Journal of Consumer Psychology 21 (201I) 49-56

(e.g., quenching thirst by means of eating ra1her than drinking).
This should not have an effect on 1he motivation to attain 1he
focal behavior following subliminal conditioning but should
diminish motivation for that behavior wi1hout such a condition­
ing procedure. This idea will be tested in Study 2.

The present research

In the present paper, we report two studies 1hat aimed to
examine 1he combined effects of deprivation and conditioning
for the behavior of drinking water. Drinking water was selected
as it is an effective way to reduce fluid deprivation and fluid is
clearly an essential resource of which people should not become
too deprived. However, apart from being motivated by
deprivation, people can, in principle, also be motivated to
drink water because it is rewarding in itself. Furthermore, we
chose a relatively neutrally tasting product (water) of which it
could be expected that attaching it to positive affect would
enhance it<; positivity ra1her 1han a specific soda or brand which may already be positive for participants to begin wi1h (cf. Gibson, 2008).

Study I tested whether co-activating the subliminally
primed behavior representation of drinking with neutral affect
would result in drinking motivation depending on fluid
deprivation, but would be high irrespective of deprivation if
the representation was conditioned to positive affect. Study 2
focused on the behavioral specificity of participant<;· motiva­ tion, by testing for high fluid-deprived individuals whether replenishing fluid deprivation by means of eating cucumber would diminish drinking motivation if 'drinking' was co­ activated with neutral affect, but would not affect drinking motivation if'drinking' was conditioned to positive affect

Study 1

This study tested the idea that whereas the motivation to
drink following subliminal priming should normally depend
on the deprivation of fluids, conditioning the mental repre­
sentation of drinking to positive affect can motivate drinking
behavior in the absence of actual deprivation. Deprivation was
manipulated by asking participants to eat crackers in an alleged
consumer product task. In actuality, consuming crackers was
expected to exacerbate participants’ need for fluid (cf. StTahan
et al., 2002) and thus was part of the deprivation manipulation.
Next, half of the participants were allowed to drink water
(hence, the low deprivation condition). Participants then
engaged in a conditioning task where drinking water was
subliminally primed and paired with neutral or positive
affect. Importantly, the accessibility of the drinking represen­
tation thus was equal for all participants. Finally, to assess
changes in behavior, we unobtrusively measured water
consumption as part of a product-comparison task. In line
with earlier work (e.g., Strahan et al., 2002; Veltkamp et al.,
2008a), it was expected that water intake would increase with
fluid deprivation. Importantly, however, positively condition­
ing “drinking” would enhance water intake when fluid
deprivation is relatively low.

Method

Participants and design
Sixty-five undergraduates participated in the experiment in

exchange for a small fee. This study used a 2 (deprivation: low
vs. high) x 2 ( conditioning: neutral vs. positive) between­
participant design.

Procedure
To conceal the real purpose of the study, the study was

announced as an experiment on perception and consumer product
judgment. The experiment was run in a room containing three
tables separated by large screens. Thus, in each part of the
experimental session participants could see only their own table.

Deprivation manipulation
Participant<; started with an alleged product-comparison

task where they had to eat two different crackers and filled out
a short questionnaire to rate different aspects of the crackers
(e.g., shape). Next, participants in the low deprivation
condition were provided with an empty glass and a jug filled
wi1h water, allowing 1hem to take water before proceeding to
the next part of the experiment. In the high deprivation
condition, participant<; were not provided with the drinking gear, and hence did not quench 1heir thirst.

Pilot work
Prior to the experiment, we conducted a pilot test to assess

the effects of our tTeatment on self-reported thirst. Thirty-one
undergraduates (drawn from a different student population)
were assigned randomly to either the low or high deprivation
condition. After a I 0-minute filler task, they indicated on a I 0-
point scale (ranging from I, not at all, to 10, very much) how
thirsty they felt at that moment. An ANOV A revealed a
significant effect of the deprivation manipulation on ratings of
thirst, F(l,30)=24.04,p<.001, ,,,2=.45. The reported level of thirst was significantly higher in the high deprivation (M= 6.50, SD= .43) than in 1he low deprivation (M=3.65, SD=.39) condition. Thus, the crackers without water consumption treatment (high fluid deprivation) increased rated 1hirst over 10 minutes post-ingestion.

Conditioning manipulation
Next, participants were seated behind a computer and learned

1hat 1hey wou Id do a “dot-detection tac;k” where all kinds of words
would be presented on the screen, sometimes followed by dots
presented briefly above or below these words. Their task was to
indicate whe1her they had seen a dot or not. In actuality, in this
task drinking words were subliminally primed and paired with
either positive or neutral affective words (for a similar procedure,
see e.g., Aarts, Custers, & Holland, 2007; Custers & Aarts, 2005).
Because the focal behavior was drinking a glass of water, we used
1he following three drinking words: drinking, glass, and water.
These words were each paired with either nine positive words
(good, nice, fun, love, great, smile, friend, pleasant, peace) or nine
neutral words (1hus, fur1hermore, when, although, therefore,
however, such, also, because; taken from Custers & Aartc;, 2005).

Ilrnovative Food Science and Emerging Tedmologies 56 (2019) 102178

Contents lis ts available at ScienceDirect

Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ifset

Potential applications for virtual and augmented reality technologies in

sensory science

E.C. Croftona ,,,, C. Botinestean3 , M. Fenelon\ E. Gallagher”
• Teagruc Food Research Cl’nlre, Ashtown, Dublin, Ireland
• Teaga.,c Food Research Ce/lJre. Moa-eparlc, lrd.and

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Sensory science has advanced significantly in the pa�1: decade and is quickly evolving to become a key tool for
Virtual reality predicting food product success in the marketplace. Increasingly, sensory data tedmiques are moving towards
Augmented reality more dynamic aspec.1:S of sensory perception, taking account of the various ,1:ages of user-product intenK.1ions.
Emerging technologies Recent technological advancements in virtual reality and augmented reality have unlocked the potential for new
Sensory science immersive and intemt1ive systems which could be applied as powerful tools for capturing and deciphering the

complexities of human sensory perception. This paper reviews recent advancements in virtual and augmented
reality technologies and identifies and explores their potential application within the field of sensory science.
The paper also considers the pOS1.ible benefits for the food industry as well as key challenges posed for wide­
spread adoption. The findings indicate that these technologies have the potential to alter the research landscape
in sensory science by facilitating promising innovations in five principal areas: consumption context, biometrics,
food structure and texture, sensory marketing and augmenting seruory perception. J\lthougb the advent of
augmented and virtual reality in sensory science offers new exciting developments, the exploitation of these
technologies is in its infancy and future research will understand how they can be fully integrated with food and
human responses.
In�trial relevance: The need for sensory evaluation within the food industry is becoming i ncreasingly complex
as companies continuously compete for con,”ll[l]er produt1: acceptance in today’s highly innovative a nd global
food environment. Recent technological developments in virtual and augmented reality offer the food industry
new opportunities for generating more reliable insights into coru”Ulller sensory perceptions of food and bev­
erages, contributing to the design and development of new products with optimised consumer benefits. These
technologies also hold sigrrificant potential for improving the predictive validity of newly launched produt1:S
within the marketplace.

1. Introduction acceptability and competitiveness of food products within the market­

place (Tuorila & Monteleone, 2009). However, in the current highly

Sensory evaluation is a scientific discipline that is used to unde r­ competitive and global food environment, the need for sens ory in­
s tand h ow hu mans perceive and respond to the various stimuli in food formation is becoming increasingl y complex, as industry face constant

using the five senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing. From a pressure to develop high quality food products at reduced time-to­

fundamental perspec tive, it attempts to understand the intricacies of market (Delarue, 2015). Over the pas t decade, advancements in digital

sensory pen:eption and consumer behaviour, w hile at an applied level it technologies, such as smartphones and social media applications, have

can be used as a tool across the produc t developmen t process to char­ stimulated a new era of consumer connectivity, providing researchers
acterise and understand h ow the sensory properties of food drive con­ with opportunities to collect new types of sensory information (Jaeger

sumer decision making and hedonic resp onse (Kemp, Ng, Hollowood, & et al., 2017; Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017). As a result, the range and so­

Hort, 2018). For many years, sensory data was based on averaging phistication of techniques available for capturing and deciphering

sensory responses from consumers e valuating food s under controlled consumer’s sensory per ceptions toward s food is evolving substantially

conditions in a sensory laboratory (Hathaway & Simons, 2017), and to meet industry demand s. Sensory evaluation is being increasingly
was simply viewed by industry as a means for comparing the applied by comopanies in both developed and emerging markets, as a

• Corresponding author.
E-mail address: emily.crofton@teagasc.ie (F.C. Crofton).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2019.102178
Received 24 November 2018; Received in revised furm 29 January 2019; Accepted 13 June 2019
Available online 19 J 1111e 2019
1466-8564/ © 2019 Published by Flsevier Ltd.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2019.102178

mailto:emily.crofton@teagasc.ie

www.elsevier.com/locate/ifset

E.G. Crofton, el’ al

powerful tool for predicting product success across a range of industrial

fuoctions including research and development, quality control and

marketing (Delarue, 2015; Kemp et al., 2018).

As the digital world continues to evolve at a rapid pace, new virtual

reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies are emerging

with the potential to transform the landscape for collecting and pro­

cessing sensory and consumer information. Although both virtual and

augmented reality have existed in various forms for decades (Ong &

Nee, 2004), it is only recently these technologies have advanced to a

point of radically changing how people connect and interact with the

world (Porcherot et al., 2018; Velasco, Obrist, Petit, & Spence, 2018).

Research on the industrial applications for VR and AR is a strong and

rapidly growing area, with the market for these technologies projected

to reach $16

2

billion by 2020 (Business Insider, 2016). Recent tech­

nological developments in VR and AR are already showing a demon­

strable impact across a number of industries including healthcare

(Silva, Southworth, Raptis, & Silva, 2018), manufacturing (Bottani &

Vignali, 2018), engineering (Singh & Erdogdu, 2004), entertainment

(Aukstakalnis, 2017), education (Merchant, Goetz, Cifuentes, Keeney­

Kennicutt, & Davis, 2014), automotive (Lawson, Salanitri, & Waterfield,

2016) and travel (Gibson & O’Rawe, 2018). For example, within in­

dustrial manufacturing these technologies have been applied

throughout the production process from initial product design and as­

sembly operations, through to enabling real-time discussions between

multidisciplinary teams located at across the globe, resulting in fewer

design flaws, enhanced workflow efficiency and increased savings in

terms of costs and man-hours (Aukstakalnis, 2017). Beyond manu­

facturing, AR technology is being used by the automotive industry to

support accident and emergency services. For example, Mercedes Benz

are placing quick response (QR) codes on the B-pillars and fuel doors of

all new cars, enabling first responders to quickly view colour-coded

images of wiring and fuel systems using an AR mobile application

(Etherington, 2016). As these technologies open up a world of possi­

bilities for transforming the real world and how people in teract with it,

the food industry is now endeavouring to understand how to capitalise

on these digital tools for competitive gain. The focus of this paper is to

review recent advancements in virtual and augmented reality technol­

ogies and to explore their potential applications within the field of

sensory science, highlighting the potential benefits for the food industry

and outlin.ing the challenges that currently exist for widespread adop­

tion of these technologies.

2. Recent advancements in virtual and augmented reality

technologies

2.1. Virtual realily

Although virtual reality and augmented reality are both evolving

interface systems for displaying digital information, they are distinct

technologies with fuodamental differences in the type of computing

systems required to experience them. Due to continuous advances in

core enabling technologies and the conflicting meaning of the words

virtual and reality, the term virtual reality has been exceptionally dif­

ficult to define and no single definition exists in current literature as a

result (Aukstakalnis, 2017). Generally, VR is described as an immersive

human-computer interaction in which an individual can explore and

interact with a three-dimensional computer-generated environment. A

VR experience is typically accomplished through the use of a stereo­

scopic head mounted display (HMO) which completely replaces the

user’s view of the real physical world with an interactive synthetic

environment (Siegrist et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2018). Virtual reality as a

concept is not entirely new, and dates back to the late 1950s when

Morton Heilig, an American cinematographer, developed (and later

patented) the Sensorama, an arcade-style cabinet which stimulated the

senses through the use of stereoscopic 3D images, stereo speakers, fans

and a vibrating chair. The Sensorama is considered one of the earliest

Innovative Food Science and !’merging fechnologies � (2019) 102118

examples of immersive, multisensory technologies. In the late 1960s,

computer graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland, alongside his student Bob

Sproull, engineered what is widely considered to be the first HMO

system known as the Sword of Damocles (Sutherland & La Russa, 2017).

The weight of the system required it to be suspended from the ceiling,

but the technology was capable of tracking the movement of the user’s

head, and could display simple 3D wireframe images in the user’s

viewing direction. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the United States

government, particularly the National Science Foundation, Department

of Defence, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

(NASA) were also involved in their own research efforts, which yielded

a large pool of skilled researchers in areas such as computer graphics,

network infrastructure and simulation modelling (Lowood, 2018;

Sutherland & La Russa, 2017). However, the term virtual reality was

not popularised until the late 1980s, when Jason Lanier, founder ofVPL

Research, developed the first commercially available VR products in­

cluding the Dataglove and the EyePhone head mounted display (Lauria

& Ford-Morie, 2015).

Between these early systems and today, major advances in compu­

tational power and visualisation and tracking technologies have given

rise to a new era of affordable, fully immersive stereoscopic HMDs that

are widely available to consumers. Nowadays, there is a multitude of

VR HMO devices on the market ranging from high-end PC-based or

“tethered” display systems to lower end devices driven by smartphones.

While the majority ofVRasystems developed to date focus on controlling

the user’s visual and auditory experiences, technologies such as haptic

gloves and full-body haptic suits are being increasingly used for adding

tactile and kinaesthetic content across a range of VR applications

(Aukstakalnis, 2017; Gallace & Spence, 2014). Haptic gloves, such as

CyberGrasp”‘ , Dexmo”‘ and HaptX, are capable of stimulating the sense

of touch by transmitting tactile inputs (e.g. vibrations and pressure) to

the user’s skin using force feedback tec hnology. However, effectively

reproducing tactile sensations within a VR system poses considerable

technological challenges due to the complexity of the human nervous

system (Aukstakalnis, 2017; Perret & Vander-Poorten, 2018).

lo terms of PC-based VR, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive were the first

modern, commercially available platforms to retrigger the public’s in­

terest in virtual reality technology. Following the pre-release of two

developer models and acquisition of Oculus by Facebook for $2 billion

dollars, the consumer version of Oculus Rift was released in early 2016.

VR competitor to the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, was released one month

later following collaboration between Valve Cm:poration and smart­

phone manufacturer, HTC (Sutherland & La Russa, 2017). Both HMDs

are equipped with a high resolution display of 1080 x 1200 pixels per

eye with a field of view extending 110-degrees, and have built-in sen­

sors for tracking the position and orientation of the user using six de­

grees-of-freedom, enabling the user to move around the virtual space.

Additionally, motion-tracked controllers allow the person to use their

hands to intuitively manipulate virtual objects and interact with the

computer simulation, further enhancing the feeling of immersion

(Siegrist et al., 2018). While PC driven VR undoubtedly offers the most

powerful immersive experience of modern VR technology, the headsets

are expensive and require the user to be physically tethered to a com­

puter with advanced processing power. As a result, mainstream adop­

tion of consumer PC VR has been primarily in the gaming industry to

date (Aukstakalnis, 2017). Nonetheless, new headsets are increasingly

being launched into the market delivering more sophisticated levels of

technology. For example, the HTC Vive Pro, launched in April 2018,

provides wireless capability and features a 78% resolution increase to

1400 x 1600 per eye, promising the consumer a more immersive and

comfortable VR experience (Warren, 2018).

Advancements in smartphone technology (e.g. increased processing

power, higher pixel counts, and high-performance sensors) have played

an integral role in connecting consumers to virtual worlds. Smartphone­

based VR requires a headset with custom lenses in which a user can

simply insert a compatible phone. Smartphone VR devices currently

2