Explaining Generation Z’s Actual Use of Augmented Reality in Retail: A UTAUT2-Based Conceptual Framework

Augmented reality (AR) is increasingly embedded in mobile retail applications through virtual try-on, product placement, interactive visualisation, and contextual product information. Yet its managerial value depends on enacted use rather than on consumers merely reporting that they intend to use a feature. This conceptual paper develops a UTAUT2-based framework that places actual AR use at the centre of explanation for Generation Z retail consumers. An integrative, concept-centric review was conducted through targeted searches across scholarly publisher platforms, backward citation chaining, and DOI verification. The revised evidence base comprises 32 verified sources spanning consumer-facing AR retail research, foundational AR and UTAUT/UTAUT2 studies, technology-use research, and conceptual-review and measurement methodology. Evidence was coded by construct, focal outcome, and relevance to the proposed relationships. The framework retains UTAUT2's causal ordering: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, price value, facilitating conditions, and habit shape behavioural intention, while behavioural intention, facilitating conditions, and habit are proposed to explain subsequent actual use. The principal adaptation is operational rather than a claim of a wholly new causal architecture. Actual AR use is specified as a multidimensional formative behavioural composite capturing frequency, duration, breadth, recency, and repetition, preferably using behavioural logs. The paper further treats Generation Z as a heterogeneous sampling boundary rather than a homogeneous causal category and identifies prior AR experience, device access, retail task, and context as boundary conditions. The resulting framework offers a transparent and testable basis for examining the intention, by using gap in AR retail without conflating adoption intention with enacted behaviour.

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Augmented Reality, Actual Use, Generation Z

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Explaining Generation Z’s Actual Use of Augmented Reality in Retail: A UTAUT2-Based Conceptual Framework

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