The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse's impact on users and organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing‐focused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse. We identify new research directions and propose a new framework offering valuable contributions for academia, practice, and policy makers. Our future research agenda culminates in a checklist for researchers which clarifies how the metaverse can be beneficial to digital marketing and advertising, branding, services, value creation, and consumer wellbeing.

The Metaverse has the potential to form the next pervasive computing archetype that can transform many aspects of work and life at a societal level. Despite the many forecasted benefits from the metaverse, its negative outcomes have remained relatively unexplored with the majority of views grounded on logical thoughts derived from prior data points linked with similar technologies, somewhat lacking academic and expert perspective. This study responds to the dark side perspectives through informed and multifaceted narratives provided by invited leading academics and experts from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. The metaverse dark side perspectives covered include: technological and consumer vulnerability, privacy, and diminished reality, human–computer interface, identity theft, invasive advertising, misinformation, propaganda, phishing, financial crimes, terrorist activities, abuse, pornography, social inclusion, mental health, sexual harassment and metaverse-triggered unintended consequences. The paper concludes with a synthesis of common themes, formulating propositions, and presenting implications for practice and policy.

Consumers with a high autotelic need for touch tend to experience deprivation because they cannot touch products while shopping online. Augmented reality (AR) in retail allows consumers to explore products virtually as if they were present in the physical environment, except the fact that they are not touchable. This study investigates whether AR can compensate for this lack of touch or whether, on the contrary, these consumers are skeptical because they crave even more real haptic input. The results of four studies consistently show that consumers' autotelic need for touch is associated with benefits that positively impact various managerially relevant outcomes such as store and product attitudes or purchase intentions. However, the results also point to differences between expected and experienced hedonic and utilitarian benefits along the customer journey. Hedonic benefits prevail when consumers with a high need for touch actually experience AR, while they instead expect utilitarian benefits. The findings contribute to the AR marketing and online retailing literature by demonstrating that AR features can mimic touchable features of products. They also highlight the practical benefits of AR as a powerful tool in digital marketing.

According to recent research in augmented reality (AR) marketing, AR‐based product presentations have the potential to create extraordinary shopping experiences across the customer journey. However, the mechanisms that drive key marketing metrics, such as brand evaluations or purchase intentions, are yet to be thoroughly understood. Drawing on the Affect‐as‐Information Theory, this study placed affective responses, such as customers' enjoyment and inspiration, at the center of decision‐making and conducted two online experiments to empirically investigate (1) the differences in the intensity of affective responses between AR and non‐AR, (2) the interplay between affective and cognitive responses in shaping behavioral outcomes, and (3) the moderating role of customer‐specific factors (customers' AR familiarity and product knowledge) on affective responses. According to the results, although the affective responses increase purchase and word‐of‐mouth intentions directly as well as indirectly through product/brand attitudes, AR does not per se guarantee more positive affective responses; rather, they depend on the technical implementation of AR features and customers' AR expertise, among others.