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Effective Communication of an Organizational Vision:
A comparison between Virtual Reality and Oral Presentation
Student: F.L. Schukking Supervisor: Prof. Dr. A. Boonstra Second assessor: Dr. O.P. Roemeling
Master thesis
MSc Business Administration – Change Management Faculty of Economics and Business
ABSTRACT
This study compares the effectiveness of two communication channels, an oral presentation (OP) and a virtual reality (VR) film in transferring an organizational vision, with a case of a Dutch supermarket transferring its vision to a group of potential employees. The study examines this by using in-depth semi-structured interviews (n=10). The results show that despite the absence of a feedback loop within the VR channel, it is more effective at communicating a vision, due to its positive influence on hedonic factors (enjoyment, emotional involvement, fantasy and role projection) and additional properties of
immersiveness and self-discovery. This research contributes to literature by showing how hedonic factors are affected differently between the two channels and how this influences the vision transfer. The results imply that organizations that want to communicate a vision can choose an appropriate communication channel and VR can work well in certain circumstances.
INTRODUCTION
Values are one of the most powerful forces that contribute to the performance and survival of a firm (Cameron & Quinn, 2011). However, the knowledge that lies within values of an organization is not a physical or tangible resource and can be difficult to grasp and communicate to all the employees within an organization (Styhre, 2003). To spread these values, visions are used by the management or change managers to inspire and motivate employees (Cawsey, Deszca & Ingols, 2011). To connect the strategic goals of the company to its underlying values, alignment is enhanced within the company and a shared meaning can be created and similar behavior can be stimulated (Olk, Rainsford & Tsungting, 2015). For instance, Google’s vision: ‘To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Research suggests that shared meanings on a vision, similar interpretations and beliefs within the workforce positively affect responses to change (Connelly, Gaddis & Helton-Fauth, 2002). The transfer of a vision to the employees is seen as a driving force behind an organization (Lucas, 1998; Tarnovskaya, Elg, & Burt, 2008), studies found significant differences in organizational performance when compared to organizations without a vision because of its positive influence on employee performance and attitudes (Kirckpatrick & Locke, 1996; Collins & Porras, 1996; Nanus, 1992, Kotter, 1996). Organizations where knowledge and awareness of purpose prevail, employee productivity, overall performance and growth are significantly higher in comparison to organizations where this is not the case (Bruch & Vogel, 2011).
In order to understand how to communicate a vision, it is first important to understand on the conceptual level how messages are transferred in general between the members of an organization. Shannon and Weaver (1949) offer a theoretical model which conceptualizes how any idea or message is transferred from sender to its receiver (Lorimer, 2002), which will be explained step-by-step in the literature review. Applied to this study, this model shows how an organizational vision is communicated in a message by the management to- and interpreted by its receiver, for instance an employee. This theory helps to explain that every channel, as a medium that transfers the message, due to its characteristics results in a different interpretation of the message by its receiver. Thus, according to this theory, the characteristics of a communication channel could be crucial for the way a message is sent and received. Knowing this, certain channels could be preferred over others in transferring messages, depending on the content and goal of the message. Therefore, it is valuable to dive deeper into the characteristics of certain communication channels and examine how these features possibly influence receivers’ interpretation and in the end retention of the message. In this study, the theory of Shannon & Weaver (1949) is regarded as the fundamental theory of communicating messages and is ought to help in explaining the different effects of communication channels on transferring visions.
through the organization. However, the effectiveness of this communication channel often remained low because it is less equipped to address all human senses at the same time, Biocca and Levy (2013, p.22): ‘Noise, ambiguity and mental effort appear to fill the void presented by the vague smoke signals of traditional codes and media.’, so a channel due to its characteristics is less or more able to influence human senses. The rise of technological developments brings possibilities that address human senses in ways that result in diminished noise, ambiguity and mental effort as addressed by Biocca and Levy (2013).
A developing technology, known as Virtual Reality (VR) has, during the last decade, taken off, entering various fields of human occupations (Gartner, 2017). In 1962, the first VR video arcade appeared, where users could ride a motorcycle through New York City, wherein users could experience the wind and bumps on the road by sitting on ‘moving’ motorcycles with a 360-degree view on a flat-screen (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003). Since then, the technology has been developing, leading to VR glasses, where it is known from today, that provide a 360-degree view around the users’ eyes. A definition of VR is: ‘A high-end user-computer interface that involves real-time simulation and interactions through multiple sensorial channels.’ (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003, p.3). In VR, these sensorial channels are visual, auditory and tactile. This ability to involve, often addressed by the term ‘immersiveness’, refers to the degree to which a virtual environment, generated by a computer, is able to submerge the perceptual system of the user. The technology allows a user to step into a different world, to simulate situations with computer generated environments and behavior. The more the system is able to captivate the senses and blocks out stimuli from the physical world, the more the system is considered immersive (Biocca & Delaney, 1995, p.57). The immersive feature of VR is supported by the use of VR glasses, by which the user feels as if he actively takes part in it, simulating physical presence in that environment by
surrounding the user with 360-degree images and sound (Freina & Ott, 2015). One of the key reasons for using VR is that users have a bigger feeling of presence in comparison to 2D experiences (Daugherty & Biocca, 2002). Following the pace of its developments, VR seems to initiate a change in how certain content and information could be transferred to us (Hall & Takahashi, 2017). In effect, VR might support the efforts of transferring a vision of the management by immersing the employee in the vision and possibly enhancing the process of understanding (Windschitl et al. 2013).
Despite the fact that VR and its key features are spreading in various disciplines and applications since the early 1990’s, empirical evidence on its effective use is still missing (Scheumie et al, 2001). There is no theory found on how certain features of VR affect humans and on its influence on
products is studied from a psychological perspective, which could be helpful in this study to examine how humans are possibly affected by VR technology. Consumer buying behaviour, which is not aimed at functionality only but also values the aesthetic value of a certain product is examined. Apparently, there are characteristics in products that do not have a specific function, but which consumers find appealing enough to consume or buy a product (e.g. watching a ballet show due to aesthetics). In other words, Hirshman and Holbrook (1982) examined human emotional responses to products, known as hedonic consumption and developed them into the hedonic theory. ‘Hedonic consumption designates those facets of consumer behavior that relate to the multi-sensory, fantasy and emotive aspects of one’s experience with products.’ (Hirshman & Holsbrook, 1982, p. 92). The theory was later on examined by Holsapple and Wu (2007) who developed a framework consisting of six human hedonic factors categorized in two sets: (1) emotional responses due to: enjoyment, emotional involvement and arousal and (2) imaginal responses due to: fantasy, role projection and escapism. Each of these factors will be further elaborated upon in the literature review. The factors addressed by hedonic theory provide insights into how people respond to all sort of experiences, such as interaction with a new technology or attending an oral presentation. It would be interesting to examine how the factors are influenced and how this influences interpretation of a message by receivers, for instance a vision. This knowledge in the end could be used in achieving a shared interpretation of a vision among members of an organization. So, the hedonic theory could help in developing theory on how certain communication channels address hedonic factors and how this influences receivers’ interpretation of a message that is transferred via a certain communication channel. The six factors assist in explaining how communication channels influence the way messages are interpreted and recalled by receivers.
To examine communication channels, this study conducts research on two channels: a VR channel compared to a more traditional way of transferring a message, an oral presentation, in a field experiment. These two channels are examined beyond the simple ways of transferring information, with respect to how their characteristics influence hedonic factors and eventually affecting the way a message is interpreted. In addition, the ‘immersiveness’ factor present in VR (Biocca & Delaney, 1995) will be researched in both communication channels to see whether there is a difference between them and
whether this difference has any influence on the hedonic factors. Thus, this research takes a step further in developing the holistic theory on the influence on hedonic factors in different communication channels when transferring a vision.
communication channel? (2) How are the hedonic factors influenced by the two channels? By answering these, the main research question will be answered: Which of the two channels is more effective in communicating an organizational vision?
LITERATURE REVIEW
This section discusses academic discourse on the following topics: vision, communication of a vision, the communication theory of Shannon & Weaver (1949), the hedonic factor theory of Hirschman & Holbrook (1982) and VR technology.
Vision
Visions are abstract quotes that are aimed at the future and are used to give meaning, to give direction, to unite, to energize and to evaluate (Buch & Vogel, 2011). For example, Starbucks’ vision: ‘To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.’ It is a quote that aims to encourage and motivate employees in their daily work (Locke et al, 1991). With these abstract quotes, a firm transfers a certain organizational identity to its employees so that they are able to align themselves with the values and image of the firm (Olk et al, 2015). A vision often entails a higher goal, something that represents the foundations of an organization, represents who the organization is, where it wants to go, and which empowers its employees to enact behavior that takes the organization towards the goal that it pursues (Van Der Loo, Geelhoed, Samhoud, 2007). It provides a framework for employees whereon they can orient themselves and which places their daily activities into a broader context. It includes ambitions of the company and is the overarching reason for all the actions that are undertaken by the organization and its employees. The employees are connected by the vision, inspired and integrated. It is able to steer behavior and helps energizing motivation to make decisions in their daily work (Van Der Loo, Geelhoed, Samhoud, 2007).
Levin (2000) shows key attributes that an effective vision should entail: future-oriented, compelling, bold, aspiring, believable and achievable. Levin (2000) argues that these implicit and subjective visions frequently obtain confusing words and that visions therefore are not capable of providing meaning and motivation for employees. The employees are for these reasons often not able to translate a very general and abstract vision about beliefs, principles and purpose into specific desired behavior. Styhre (2003 a vision is dependent on the context in which it is conceived and to create lasting knowledge has to be actively used in practice to be understood deeply (Styhre, 2003; Helsen et al, 2000; Ericsson et al, 1993).
In organizations, large amounts of company resources are spent on transferring visions to
employees and influencing desired behavior. Managers can use a wide variety of techniques and media to communicate vision to employees ranging from briefings, internal mailings, memo’s and newsletters to oral presentations or corporate videos (Rafiq & Ahmed, 1994). These techniques differ in their
defined as a feature that is able to captivate humans’ senses and blocks out stimuli from the physical world and by that able to submerge the perceptual system of a viewer. Next, in order to make sense of types of communication channels and their immersiveness, a deeper understanding of how
communication works on a conceptual level is needed.
Communication channels
In their mathematical theory of communication, Shannon and Weaver (1949) conceptualize how any idea or message is transferred from sender to its receiver (Lorimer, 2002)
Message 1 is formulated by the encoder who evolves an idea into words. The receiver decodes the message by interpreting it into meaningful content in their perspective, defined as Message 2. The channel between the encoder and receiver stands for the medium by which the message is sent, such as voice, image or printed words such email. The receiver is able to reply to the encoder by sending a message or a question through the feedback loop. An interruption or distraction, such as differences in language or interpretation, is classified as ‘semantic noise’ that can result in misunderstanding of the meaning of the message (Lorimer, 2002, p2). Technical noise relates to external factors affecting how accurately the message is transmitted from the sender to the receiver.
clarifying misunderstandings or misinterpretation by asking questions (Fidler & Johnson, 1984). So, different channels, according to this model, could possibly address different factors, inherent to the characteristics of the medium. Knowing this, certain channels would be preferred over others in transferring certain messages, depending on the content and goal of the message. The channel could be crucial for the way the message is sent and received.
However, the communication theory does not reveal which factors make the communication more or less effective, how they may impact way receiver perceives the message. The hedonic theory could possibly be of assistance in explaining this interpretation of a message.
Hedonic Theory
The hedonic theory originated in marketing literature, wherein consumer behavior is studied and which is aimed on understanding why people have intentions to consume esthetic experiences (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982). According to their theory, ‘Hedonic consumption designates those facets of consumer behavior that relate to the multi-sensory, fantasy and emotive aspects of one’s experience with products.’ (Hirshman & Holsbrook, 1982, p. 92). The three factors will be explained briefly. Multi-sensory means the receipt of experience in multiple sensory modalities including taste, sound, scent, tactile impression and visual images (Hirshman & Holsbrook, 1982, p. 92). When experiencing something by the senses, people develop internal images, historical images from experience in the past and recalling that event or fantasy images, constructing a mental phenomenon out of the experience. Lastly, emotional arousal covers emotions such as happiness, anger, fear and is posited to be a motivator for consumption of certain products.
Therefore, this study uses the research of Holsapple and Wu (2007) and the hedonic theory as the basis to examine effectiveness of the two channels in communicating a vision and how this in turn affects the possible retention of the message. However, prior to applying the hedonic theory in this research, it is necessary to make certain adjustments to the six factors. To start with the first category, the imaginal responses, the factor escapism is not applicable to the communication of a vision. The communication of a vision aims to illustrate future situations and is not originated towards escaping reality, on the contrary, it is describing a future desired reality. Therefore, the factor escapism is not included in this research.
The factor arousal from the second category emotional responses, is described by Holsapple and Wu (2007, p.87) as ‘The state of emotional and mental activation or alertness elicited by external sensory stimulation’, whereas enjoyment is ‘The degree to which performing an activity is perceived as providing pleasure and joy in its own right, aside from performance consequences’. These two factors have a high level of overlap and are considered as one and the same factor in this research.
Fantasy is described by Holsapple and Wu (2007, p.87) as ‘The imagined events or sequences of mental images representing an integration of the demands of all the psyche and reality components’. This can be interpreted as being part of a possible future reality for example, as already mentioned earlier in this document the vision of for example Apple’s ‘Think different’. Hereby the employee associates him or herself with a larger goal or aim of the specific organization.
Role projection is described by Holsapple and Wu (2007, p.87) as ‘The mental activities whereby individuals project themselves into particular roles or characters’. This stands for the employee imagining himself or herself into a certain role and how that role contributes to the overall vision. As argued by Levin (2000) it is often difficult for employees on the work floor to transfer a very general and abstract vision about believes, principles and purpose into specific desired behavior. In addition, Styhre (2003) argued the personal and the social values are leading in the interpretation of knowledge such as a vision.
METHODOLOGY
Research approach and case selection
Because of the scarcity of literature on the communication channels for transferring a vision especially with regard to VR application, a qualitative research design is the most appropriate. A qualitative method can help to acquire a deeper understanding of how the hedonic factors are influenced and how this might influence the communication of a vision (Eisenhardt, 1989). In this study, a randomized field experiment is performed in order to examine the two conditions in a natural environment, namely the one group (the VR condition) compared to the control group (the oral presentation (OP) condition) (Gerber & Green, 2008). A field experiment stands for the combination of two methodologies: fieldwork and experiment. In the experiment, the participants are randomly assigned to the treatment and control group. Fieldwork is chosen over a laboratory setting because it simulates the conditions under which the VR and OP
conditions would occur naturally (Gerber & Green, 2008). Semi-structured interviews are conducted with group participants to allow ideas and themes to emerge during the interviews with follow-up questions based on the answers of the participant, which result in the rich qualitative data (Eisenhardt, 1989). An interview guide is presented in section B of the Appendix.
The setting was provided by the supermarket chain ‘Albert Heijn’ which created a VR film in collaboration with a VR application supplier ‘&samhoud media’ in order to ‘onboard’ its new employees (impression included in section D in the Appendix). The film was created to transfer the vision of Albert Heijn and the desired behavior on new, young employees in an innovative way. The employees on the shop floor, such as shelf fillers, work directly with the customers and are a big part of the service experience of the customer. Educating these young adults and changing the behavior is important for the public image of the supermarket and the business performance of the retail organization.
For these reasons, the aim of the supermarket is, next to making the vision of their organization vivid and well understood, modifying the behavior by learning tacit etiquettes, gestures, body-language and tonality. A group of participants is randomly divided into two, one group will experience a VR film (the VR channel) and the other group will experience an oral presentation (the OP channel).
Participants
The participants are students from a high school in Haarlem, in the age between 14 and 15. This age group is selected because it is comparable to the demographic group of employees that could work in the supermarket described in the VR film. An even number of boys and girls is selected by the coordinator of the school and randomly assigned into group A (OP channel) and group B (VR channel). The maximum number of participants that is allowed by the coordinator of the school is 10, which results in 5
This number of students was limited, but enough to reach homogeneity of responses. At the end of the 4th interview, most of the respondents had repeating answers, which pointed to possible theoretical saturation (Yin, 2003). To further compensate for a relatively small sample, the interview duration is extended to 30 minutes to ensure that each participant fully expressed themselves. To ensure the internal validity of their answers, students are separated from each other after experiencing their condition, are interviewed one-on-one and cannot speak to each other in-between the interviews, because they belong to separate classes. At the end of the research day, the participants receive a debriefing about the incentives of the research and e-mail addresses were exchanged to provide possibility to get in touch with the researcher for any further clarifications.
Virtual Reality Technology
As defined in the Oxford dictionary: VR technology is ‘The computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.’(Oxford, 2018). To understand the influence of VR better, a deeper knowledge of the technological characteristics and the device used is needed. In this research, there is made use of the Samsung Gear VR as a mobile virtual reality headset, as depicted in the picture added in section F of the Appendix. To activate the gear, the procedure is as follows. Using a mobile phone as display, called Head Mounted Display (HDM), a compatible Samsung Galaxy X phone is clicked onto the frontside of the headset, over the glasses and is connected to the glasses via micro-USB port. This type of Samsung VR headset positions itself as a ‘controller’, no add-on devices such as controllers that could be held by hands were used. The hardware of the VR glasses includes a tracker, to measure real-time change of the
participants’ head by calculating the difference between the participants’ actual 3D position and one reported by the tracker. The software on the tracker is then able to obtain data about the real-time position of the person with a global positioning system (GPS) in order to report movements that are made with the gaze of the participants relatively to the environment they experience. The user could scale the image they see by using a wheel on the top of the gear. The volume can be adjusted on the right side of the glasses.
each stand for a new scene, and the user is able to select the one he favors, impression in Appendix section E.
A Skull Candy headset is plugged-in to the gear, see Appendix section F. These headphones were able to support the 360-sound mechanism, officially known as binaural audio, which is also included in the software of the application. Because of this sound technique, the audio matches the simulated setting, as they imitate the workings of the human auditory system by replicating differences between the right and left ear. For instance, when a person in the film walks by, the participant would hear the steps getting louder and fade away after the person has passed. By this, the participant feels surrounded and
‘immersed’ in the simulated world.
The VR-film
A VR-film is different from a regular film in that it provides a 360-degree view for the user. When a user puts on the headgear, so glasses and audio, the user feels as if he stands in the middle of an environment wherein he can take look around wherever he wants to. Just as in real life, the whole world around him is alive. In a 2D film, a user is obliged to see the point-of-view that the makers of the film provide to him. In section D of the Appendix, screenshots from the film are shown. In the VR plot, a new employee of the supermarket experiences a day of working at Albert Heijn and is guided by a young supermarket
manager. The film exists of two separate parts, see the script of the film in section C in the Appendix. The first part of the film is aimed on inspiring and creating awareness by the employee. The vision is
transferred by the CEO Cees Vliet, background information is provided such as history by taking a look at the first Albert Heijn in Zaandam, or insights on where products such as salads or juices are made by taking the viewer to the fabric of a supplier and some interactions with customers. What is special in a VR film is that it gives opportunity for interaction, for an impression, take a look at the screenshot in section E of the Appendix. This ‘interaction’ feature of the VR technology in this film unravels itself via
questions that are asked by the supermarket manager about the content he has told and which the user has seen. Answers to the questions pop-up in the VR screen, hanging in the computer-generated world next to the supermarket manager, and participants can guess which one seems right to them, by directing their view towards one of the answers. An answer gets selected, and the supermarket manager gives the solution to the question. Than the film continues.
coriander, where employee had to walk with the customer to the product. Second one about mandarins, where an employee assisted an old man with buying them on a ‘1+1’ discount. Third one about the pot of apple mousse which fell on the floor, where employee had to assure and calm down the customer. Last one was about cheese department, where employee advises a customer to try the cheese.
The oral presentation
An oral presentation was designed in order to replicate the scenario of the VR-film as closely as possible. In the oral presentation, the customer dialogues that appear in the VR film are acted out by two colleagues of &samhoud media in the form of a role play. The two assistants studied the VR film beforehand and focused on replicating the expressions and the same tonality of the client situations that were present in the VR film. Also, they made use of products out of the store to replicate the VR film and make it more comparable. In order to transfer similar information in both channels, and to exactly match Message 1 in the communication model of oral presentation to Message 1 in the communication model of VR film, ensuring the differences are only in the ‘channel’ part (see adapted communication models in section A of the Appendix) the script of the VR film was used literally as the text presented in the oral presentation. Next to this, screenshots from the VR film were used in a PowerPoint slide deck as slides to accompany the presentation and to aim on giving the same visual experience to the participants.
In the first part, the assistants of &samhoud media played a customer and employee-dialogue following the script and when the scene was over, the same questions were asked in the presentation just as in the VR film. Participants could raise their hands to the answer they think is correct. The answer was given directly after that by the assistant that asked the question.
The research
To start with, the participants are selected on age and on the fact that they have to be in different class-groups in order to avoid communication between them. Half of the group men, half of the group women. The day before the research, all the participants receive an email with their test group and the times they need to be in the classroom. They also receive a signed note by their coordinator to hand over to the teacher to leave the class and to be able to participate in the test condition and the interview. They are randomly assigned to the two test conditions by the coordinator that the researcher was in contact with.
two by two in rows towards the back of the class. Next to that, a big white board and a projector is present, with a computer connected to it. The room has windows on the left side.
The first condition is the oral presentation group. This was chosen on purpose, because here two assistants of &samhoud media were needed and after this can could go back to the office. The researcher put on the PowerPoint slide deck that accompanies the presentation and switches off the light. The windows give enough light to keep the room light and at the same time did not bother the projection of the PowerPoint presentation.
The research-day started at 08:15am in the high school in Haarlem. A private classroom was reserved for the research for the whole day and lasted until 17:00 pm. The first five participants walked in around 08:10. The coordinator of the school was present as well to introduce the researcher and assistants to the participants, did not reveal anything about the research purpose and left. Five participants sat behind their desks, in the front of the classroom. The researcher started with the introduction text, as shown in section C of the Appendix. Time for questions was given, and after that, the two assistants started to perform the oral presentation. The researcher clicks on the computer to match the slides to the dialogue. The researcher sat behind the participants to not distract their view and not influence their opinion. The presentation took about 20 minutes, which was around the same amount of time when adding up the time of the two parts of the VR film. At the end of the presentation, the assistants left. The five participants also left the room and went back to their lessons and came back on time according to the received time schedule to participate in the interview.
The first participant came back in on 08:45-09:15, and this time sequence continued 5 times. The researcher sat behind the teacher desk, with the questions printed on a paper in front of her. The
participant sat across her, in a chair and behind a student desk. The researcher recorded every interview. In every interview, a short introduction was given by the researcher about independency of the research and confidentiality of the research, see section B of the Appendix. Then the interview started, and every interview took around 30 minutes. After the interview, the participant went back to his class.
parts of the film took around 8 minutes each, so after around 20 minutes the participants were finished and ready to leave the room and went back to their lesson. The first participant came back at 12:30 to 13:00 and this sequence continued 5 times. The interviews in this group also lasted for 30 minutes. After all the interviews at the end of the day, the class room was open for any student of the school that wanted to experience a VR film.
Data collection
Primary data is collected through a semi-structured interview (see interview questions in section B of the Appendix), secondary data from analyzing documents of Albert Heijn and &samhoud media to gain deeper insights in constructs and propositions (Eisenhardt, 1989). To ensure an academic research process, controllability, reliability and validity (Swanborn, 1996) are addressed. The researcher is on an internship at &samhoud media. To minimize potential researcher bias, the oral presentation and the dialogues were performed by 2 interns from &samhoud media from a different department, who were not informed about the purposes of this research. The instrument bias is addressed by using the same
interview questions in both groups. During the interview, the same introduction text is told wherein independence of the researcher and confidentiality is explained.
Validity is obtained by keeping in mind three focus points: internal- and external validity and construct validity (Swanborn, 1996; Yin, 2003). To assess the last mentioned one, the interview questions are based on the research of Holsapple and Wu (2007, p.88) and transformed to apply to this research, for instance, two constructs of the Hedonic theory are left out because they cannot be applied in this research context. To enhance objectivity, the vision of Albert Heijn was coded by labelling each word to a code, shown in Table 1, in order to see easily if participants can reproduce these words, indicating if the vision was communicated clearly and effectively.
TRANSFERRED MESSAGE CODE
Albert Heijn streeft de beste winkel in de buurt te zijn, voor iedereen: jong, oud, rijk en arm (visie Cees Vliet, CEO)
AH, ST, BE, WI, BU, IE, JO, OU, RI, AR, VI, CE, VL
Missie: alle ingrediënten voor een beter leven voor iedereen en het meest geliefde en gezonde bedrijf van en voor Nederland - Onze Albert Heijn)
MI, AL, IN, BE, LE, IE, GEL, GEZ, NE, ON, AH
Beste Winkel in de Buurt’ vier pijlers: commercieel krachtig, service met een 9+, lokaal betrokken, kostenbewust.
BE, WI, BU, VI, PI, CO, SE, LO, KO
Data analysis
To analyze the interview data, transcriptions have been made and compared. Texts were categorized per question in a codebook and translated to English (see section H in the Appendix). The factors as discussed in the literature received a two-letter code and, in this way, each interview was coded per factor, as shown in Table 2. At the same time, qualitative research set-up and semi-structured interview format allowed for potentially new factors to emerge from the words of participants. To achieve objectivity in the coding process, another research colleague who studies the same program has done coding independently, and codes were compared to achieve inter-rater reliability. Main codes, as based on the literature review and interview guide, are presented in Table 2:
FACTOR CODE Enjoyment EN Fantasy FA Role Projection RO Emotional Involvement EM Vision VI Immersiveness IM
RESULTS
To start, a comparison is made between the answers of the two groups of participants on the question about their beliefs about what the vision of Albert Heijn entails, after both experiencing their channels. This comparison allows to see which of the channels was most effective in communicating the vision. To compare these answers objectively, quotes of participants are analyzed for the codes that have previously been used to code the vision of Albert Heijn (also known as the ‘why’ of Albert Heijn).
VISION OF ALBERT HEIJN
Oral Presentation Codes Virtual Reality Film Codes P1: ‘I think they want to be a standard brand.
Standard supermarket in the Netherlands.’ [NL]
P2: ‘I think ‘Allerhande’ something with that magazine.’ [x]
P3: ‘I have no clue. I cannot remember any.’ [x]
P4: ‘I think it stands for feeding people, while next to food they have other articles, such as magazines, but it stands for nice and good products. I know this from my own experience and a bit from the presentation.’ [AL] [ IN]
P5: ‘Being the supermarket for Netherlands and Belgium?’ [NL]
P6: ‘I think in general: just for food, products for people, not too high priced, in the neighborhood and also, the most authentic, I mean, that it is it for everyone.’ [AL] [IN] [LO] [KO] [BU] [IE]
P7: ‘Well, what they said, there are different prices for different products, so as well expensive as cheaper. They said that when they stood in front of the first supermarket, the Zaanse Schans, that the poorer and the richer people could buy at Albert Heijn.’ [AL] [IE] [KO] [AR] [RI] [CV] [AH]
P8: ‘So, reasonably cheap groceries, daily products you need such as toilet paper, shampoo and that kind of things. And in the film, you hear that it is a supermarket for everyone because it’s cheaper in comparison to the old days, good products for that money.’ [KO] [AL] [IE]
P9: ‘Well, in the film they said: for everyone, everyone can do their groceries over there, that’s what that man said!’ [IE] [CV]
P10: It is not a very expensive store, it is rather general, not for exclusive groups with very expensive brands because Albert Heijn is well known, I think it can address a big target group. They said a couple of times: the store is for everyone.’ [KO] [AL] [AH] [IE]
Table 3. Participant quotes on vision of Albert Heijn.
of Albert Heijn. On the basis of this comparison, one can argue that the VR channel was more successful in communicating the intended vision. In order to understand which factors influenced the effectiveness of transferring the vision, the next section shows how the hedonic factors in each group differ between the two channels and how this difference contributes to the communication of the vision.
Enjoyment
Enjoyment relates to how participants enjoyed the process of vision communication. The oral presentation group expressed overall negative perceptions of the enjoyment factor, with regard to the presentation. Four of the five participants expressed a negative experience, one a mildly positive reaction. The negative responses used terms as boring, not delivering fun nor motivation. Participant 5: ‘It did not make an impression to me. It was okay, a bit boring, but I did not see the advantage of it. It will not change my motivation, I already forgot it while it has just been an hour ago. One positive note from participant 2 from the presentation group was: ‘It was nice that it was interactive, I liked the part where we had to answer a question.’. All of the participants wished for a more interactive presentation to increase their joy and understanding of the presented vision of Albert Heijn, which was expressed most telling in the following quote of participant 4: ‘The presentation was of no added value. I would just go into a classroom and ask students: what would you do, when a client approaches you? In that way, people interact, so will learn more from doing instead of watching’. Apparently, interactivity is something that was missed during the oral presentation, resulting in boredom and hereby forgetting the content. Although the assistants tried to make the presentation fun by using real stuff from the Albert Heijn store, the
presentation was not valued positively.
informative story that was told by the team leader. So, the previous argued point that to achieve retention from the communication a vision, enjoyment and active participation seem to have a positive influence, however, the 360-type of view can also be distracting, and parts of the story told can be missed because of the same characteristics.
In sum, when comparing the answers of the OP and VR channel overall, the answers of the participants in the VR channel are longer, more detailed and more positive. Because of this, it can be deduced that adding more enjoyment in the form and some active participation, attention and retention is increased. The interactive feature is found to be ‘cool’. However, the VR is a new technique, and 3 out of 5 participants did not ever experience a VR film before. This could also be causing higher levels of enjoyment, more feelings to express and more details to give about the content. Also, because of their age, the participants, born and raised in the digital era, are often positive towards new experiences and positive towards new technology. Hence, it can be concluded that adding active participation and enjoyment contributes to positive evaluations of a communication channel, with reservation that the newness of the technology, i.e. the first-time experience of users with VR combined with the young age of the participants could have a big influence on the positively valuation of their experience as well.
Fantasy
Fantasy is about the employees’ ability to imagine themselves working at the supermarket. Most of the participants in the oral presentation group could not relate well to this factor and had trouble answering the question about it. Most of the respondents said they were already familiar with Albert Heijn because they are customers and 80% found the dialogues and client situations from the presentation not
representing reality. Respondent 1 argued that the cases discussed in the oral presentation were
unrealistic: ‘‘No I am not prepared right, the client situations in the presentation were too positive, maybe filling shelves is not fun at all. So, everything looks nice, but I am not sure whether that is really the case.’ Participant 4 said: ‘I don’t think that it goes like this in reality on the work floor.’ and Participant 5 said: ‘The situations that are drawn can be transferred to reality but it’s just a small part of all the possible situations. I miss the unfriendly customers.’ Although the presentation was accompanied by pictures from the store and the dialogues were performed by two real people, it was not enough to influence the fantasy of the participants with it.
Although the same script was used in both conditions, the features of the VR-group made it easier for the VR participants to imagine themselves on the workplace. This is logically, because they
seen this.’ Participant 7 adds: ‘Because of the various perspectives, you could imagine how you lied at the ground when somebody broke the pot of apple sauce on the ground and then you looked up, haha!’. But, similarly to the oral presentation group, 80% of the cases said that cases were somewhat acted. Participant 6 said: However, I thought it was a bit too pretty, a bit unrealistic...’ and Participant 10 noted: ‘I don’t think that it doesn’t help nothing at all, but it felt more like a commercial.’. And, Participant 7 said: ‘Well. you saw that it was very acted, although it could have happened in real life’.
To sum up, participants in both groups found it hard to believe the client situations that were performed, it was unrealistic and too positively set. Difference is found in how well they could imagine themselves in the workplace, which was harsher for the OP group, even with the real life performed customer dialogues and pictures from the slides and which was easier for the VR group because they felt as if they stood in the middle of the supermarket.
Role Projection
Role projection stands for the employee imagining himself or herself into a certain role. In the oral presentation, all answers mention being friendly and helpful to customers. Participant 2 commented: ‘Stay friendly. And when people walk around for a long time, you ask whether you can help them.’. However, when asking for follow-up questions on the job role, respondents occurred with a sarcastic tone about the skills needed. As said by Participant 4: ‘Well, it’s not that hard, so you need to have hands and brains. The only quality you need is being healthy and yes that is all’. The sarcastic tone was also present for Participant 1: ‘You have to be friendly and you have to be tall, to get to the highest shelves, ha ha!’ and Participant 5 said: ‘You have to behave and keep up the good image of the company. (…) Whether you are happy or angry being a shelf filler, that really doesn’t make any difference.’. Thus, the responses focused mainly only on the functional part of the job such as filling in the shelves, and other parts of the role were not seen as necessary and are even joked about.
the hard skills needed for the job but also added the empathy to the client as a part of their duties. Given that management also wants to transfer the soft skills between the role and ‘feelings’ behind the
communicated vision, this helps to transfer information and influence behavior at the same time.
However, this could be because the VR film could make more impact on participants by more realistically showing expressions of customers that were helped in the store, for instance the old men, whom look very happy when they have been helped, while maybe in the oral presentation the assistant who was playing the customer could not retrieve the same feelings from the participants. Nevertheless, the assistants played the characters and the exact same text was used.
In sum, when comparing the oral presentation channel to the virtual reality channel similar answers appear from the participants, they both mention functionalities such as filling the shelves. The main difference is that in the oral presentation group, the view on the job role was narrower and more toned with a bit of sarcasm, the answers were more about the functional role. On the other hand, in the VR group, there was more sympathy for the role, extra emphasis on the role behavior towards customer service experience, but this was maybe only because in the VR film, the participants could easier see and experience the direct consequence of their actions and skills on customers and actors and it appeared more realistically to them than the oral presentation client dialogues because of the supermarket setting around it.
Emotional involvement
Emotional involvement refers to emotions of participants felt in the process of communication and how well the participants could relate to the emotions of others in the cases. All of the participants in the oral presentation expressed not to have any significant emotions during the presentation. Some of them were confused with the question asked. Participant 2 stated: ‘I did not experience any emotions during the presentation. I was just paying attention, but not really think of what I was feeling.’. Participant 5 had an equal opinion: ‘Not really. You do not really actively participate in the presentation. There is no
interaction, no feeling that you are involved. Because of this, you feel less connected to Albert Heijn. (…)’. On relating to the emotions of customers, Participant 4 said: ‘I could not emphasize because I thought the situations were overdone (...). So, the presentation client situations did not convince the participants or replicate the reality well enough for the participants to elicit emotional responses and involve them.
looked happy, that boy, I think it’s not that bad to work there because of that.’ In the VR group, the emotions of both customer as the employee itself became clearer for the participants because they could easier sympathize with their situation. The participants emphasized that they were more emotionally involved because they could see the emotional effects of the other party. An advantage of the VR film was that in every new scene, the customers changed, so for instance with the mandarin sack it was an old men and the fallen pot of apple sauce was a young boy. It appeared maybe a bit more realistic than the oral presentation where the same two people performed all the dialogues.
In sum, although the two assistants performed the exact same emotions for the employee and the customers in the VR film, for the presentation group, the role play did not result in empathy and was not emotionally involving, while the VR group found it easy to recognize emotions, possibly because they could see different customers and the situation was more realistic, therefore greater impacting the emotions.
Immersiveness
In the virtual reality group, the feeling of presence was somewhat higher. On the opposite, VR is able to surround users with sound and visuals effects and isolate the outside distractions. Participant 6 said: ‘Well, yes I felt as if I was part of the film, it was like we were sort of a crew of friends from Albert Heijn (...)’. The submerging was easier because of the glasses shutting out other distractions, Participant 7 added: ‘It appeared realistic to me, so at first, I was very surprised, I had expected less. It looked like as if you were in the supermarket, I thought you could only look around, but it felt like I was very involved. Participant 8 noted high attention in the process: “My attention was captured all time because I was spoken to(..) it was weird that I could not speak back, only listening, but it was fun.’. However, Participant 6 noted that VR also distracted sometimes: ‘My attention was good but sometimes the VR distracted me, because you are not always listening to the conversation and you are looking around.’
In sum, VR channel could catch the attention more strongly than in the presentation, because of its immersive features: elicit feelings as if one is in the supermarket self which raises attention; because the participants wear a gear, they are not able to be distracted because they cannot see anything else, so they are almost obliged to watch. On the other hand, one participant noted that VR could also distract attention due to the same immersive features, such as the 360-degree view. The oral presentation was not able to immerse the participants that much, participants lost their focus, which can have all sorts of causes, for instance the actors, the length of the presentation, the use of only pictures or maybe because the participants being high school students experience ‘presentations’, namely lessons from their teacher, every day and they did not find it not special anymore, or possibly lacked intrinsic motivation for the subject of the presentation.
Self-discovery
On top of the factors intended originally in the survey design, a factor emerged from the responses of participants. Self-discovery can be defined as the possibility to guide one’s own learning or choose in which way the communication is done, actively participating in the channel that is used and having a certain amount of control on the situation. This factor appears to be present in the VR channel and missing in the OP channel and could be a distinguishing factor.
All of the participants in VR group emphasized the interactive feature as important. As
participant 9 said ‘I think it works good because you can see everything right in front of you and because you can choose things. You could think what you wanted more, a juice or a salad, and by that, you could think better and pay attention.’. Further, participant 8 noted: ‘It was cool that you could click to
this was also more interesting and nicer to look at it, because there was interaction and you could choose yourself.’.
Such self-discovery was limited for the presentation group as participants were not able to choose how the presentation would develop and which parts of it they want to hear first. While participants were allowed to ask the questions, none of them did, which means the presentation was not guided by self-discovery. During the interviews and as seen in the answers in the previous sections, Participants often remarked the low level of interactivity of the presentation, which negatively influenced factors as enjoyment, immersiveness and emotional involvement. Self-discovery could have been added in the oral presentation by asking more questions or for instance let the participants decide in groups what a reaction of the supermarket employee should have been in a certain situation. While the same content was
communicated in the VR group, participants could choose the sequence of the story independently, which seemed important to all of the participants or at least raise feelings of control and activity, hence: self-discovery.
Summary of results
The most important findings for each group are summarized in Table 4 and will be explained accordingly. First, after interviewing both groups on their experiences with regard to their hedonic factors, the
differences in the communication channels seem to influence several factors. To start with enjoyment in the OP group, attention was sometimes lost, and enjoyment was negatively valued by 4 out of 5 participants. The participants mention to be less ‘immersed’ in the presentation, which could also be because they are high school students whom are potentially overexposed to ‘presentations’ as in: the 8 different lessons from various teachers they experience each day. As seen in Table 4, all the participants of VR group valued factors enjoyment and immersiveness positively. As participants explained, they also enjoyed the virtual reality experience better because they could interactively choose a certain sequence in a scene. This contributed to the emergence of the factor of self-discovery. Although it may seem a minor operational detail, the ability to choose which scene users want to see first and the interactivity that goes with that apparently elicits feelings of enjoyment and makes participants feel actively involved. This phenomenon can be seen at gaming as well, where people are able to make a lot of ‘choices’ and are active, therefore by some preferred over watching a film, which is more passive. Accordingly, higher self-discovery positively influenced both enjoyment and immersiveness of the participants which in turn positively affected the vision transfer.
participants were skeptical about what their role entailed, and they were not persuaded of the impact that a good service can have on customer satisfaction and only saw their job as the literal ‘filling of shelves’. They also found it more difficult to imagine themselves in the store and scored lower on fantasy. While the VR feature allows feelings of being present in the store, being surrounded by customers and by sounds making a stronger impression on the participants, who felt that their role could make a difference for customers that had a need, thus feeling emotionally involved with them.
However, it is important to interpret the results with care. First of all, it is logical that VR film showed more of the store, various actors and real client situations. Secondly, the newness of the
technology, the fact that it was for most of the participants a first-time VR experience could increase their attention and impression. Thirdly, the young participants preoccupated positively with everything that happens on a screen could bias the results overly positive for the VR channel. The factors fantasy, role projection and emotional involvement are indeed influencers on the attitude towards the experience and are influenced by VR but also because of its newness and the age group of the participants. With those limitations, the results show that the vision that was spread by Albert Heijn was 4 times as effective in the VR setting in comparison to the oral presentation channel (respectively mentioning 22 codes and 4 codes). So, despite the possible bias, hedonic factors do seem to play a role in terms of positive feelings towards an experience and are causes for valuing an experience better or worse. This in turn can possibly influence the better or worse retention of the message that was transferred in both settings.
The most striking finding is that two participant groups used the same concepts to describe their experiences, but in the opposite manner: the OP group disliked the fact that there was not enough ‘interaction’ in the oral presentation. And, the part wherein they could answer questions asked by the presenter were valued the most positive. On the opposite the VR group participants liked the ‘interactive’ features of the film the most in the whole experience, namely the part where they could answer a question or choose how the film would unfold. Thus, the results in both groups show that the emerged factor ‘self-discovery’, the last factor in Table 4, strengthens the hedonic factors, which could be seen as a
contribution to the hedonic theory of Hirschman and Holbrook (1982). Next to that, regarding the answers of the participants and keeping the communication theory of Shannon and Weaver (1949) in mind, it can be added that interpretation of the message is highly influenced by the channel used, differences in interpretation of information is caused by not only hedonic factors and immersiveness but also the
Table 4.
Summary Oral presentation channel Virtual reality channel
Enjoyment (EN)
• 4 out of 5 valued the presentation as not positive.
The participants were bored.
• 1 positive remark was about the part were the
students had to answer a question.
• All participants opted for more interactivity in the
presentation.
• Positively valued by all participants.
• The 360-view was also distracting for some, leading to
missing information told in the film.
• The positive remarks are probably present two because
it’s a first-time experience and the newness of the technology in combination with young participants.
Fantasy (FA)
• Although pictures were used in the presentation,
the participants found it hard to imagine themselves working at AH and they found the role play unrealistic.
• The participants found it easy to imagine themselves
working at Albert Heijn but still found the client situations unrealistic, too pretty, almost like a commercial.
Role Projection (RP)
• The participants are sarcastic and skeptic
towards their role. It could be because they found it hard to see the necessity of it by only
experiencing role plays of the assistants, not real customers and therefore miss the dimension that filling shelves includes.
• The participants could easily imagine the importance of
their role, the skills and couple desired behavioral action to it. This could be because they saw how their role could help customers in VR and understood the importance of it.
Emotional Involvement (EI)
• Emotional involvement is minimal present. Nor
their own emotions, nor comprehension about emotions of the customer exists, possibly because same assistants played the roles and setting was in the classroom.
• Own emotions and the emotions from the customers are
brought op easily, possibly because they could experience various customers and the situation was more realistic, therefore greater impacting the emotions.
Vision (VI)
• This group recalled four codes when asked about
the vision of Albert Heijn.
• This group recalled twenty-two codes when asked about
the vision of Albert Heijn.
Immersiveness (IM)
• The participants were not really immersed by the
presentation, maybe because they are used to presentations everyday (namely lessons at school) or other reasons why they got distracted.
• It was easier for the participants to feel immersed because
they stood in the supermarket and were surrounded by visuals and sounds. It was impossible to get distracted because they wear a gear, so they had to pay attention.
Self-discovery (SD)
• It came to forth that activity and power to choose
were low during the presentation, which made it a passive experience. This possibly influenced multiple hedonic factors negatively.
• Because of the possibility to actively choose the sequence
DISCUSSION
In this section, the results are placed in theoretical perspective and practical implications, limitations and suggestions for future research are be given, followed by a conclusion.
Summary
The traditional way of communicating a vision is often done via oral presentations given by the management of an organization. The literature has shown that this traditional way of communicating a vision lacks the ability to emerge the employee fully in the context, which is essential in understanding a vision. This study compared a VR film to an oral presentation as communication channels of an
organizational vision by measuring differences in hedonic factors (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982) in both groups. As shown in the results section, the answers of the participants of the VR channel show a
significant higher amount of detailed information resembling the intended vision of Albert Heijn more strongly in comparison to the OP channel. This could be explained by the difference in the degree of self-discovery that was allowed in both channels, defined as the degree of interactivity and the power to control certain aspects of the experience. It was found to positively influence the enjoyment, emotional involvement, fantasy, role projection and immersiveness.
Firstly, on the hedonic factors theory, there was more enjoyment for the VR channel, with reservation to participants age, newness of VR and ubiquity of the oral presentations in daily lessons. Secondly, there was approximately the same degree of fantasy in terms of how realistic the scenarios of both channels were perceived, but VR gave a better opportunity of imagining a day of work, which is logical because the technology shows the store and real customers. Third, both groups understood the basic needs for their role, however the oral presentation group emphasized soft skills on top of hard skills required on the job, with reservation that oral presentation was given by &samhoud assistants instead of real customers that were seen in the VR film. Fourth, emotional involvement had a large difference: in the oral presentation channel no emotions were reported, while the participants of the VR channel said to be emotionally involved with the customers and reported own emotions experiencing it. Fifth,
immersiveness was lower for OP channel and higher for VR group. It could be also logical due to the VR gear that makes it hard to get distracted by the environment outside of the glasses with reservation that VR experience was new to many participants. Furthermore, one VR participant noted that he had missed some information due to the distractions inside the VR environment.
Research answer
Therefore, the two sub questions: (1) ‘How does virtual reality (VR) differ from an oral presentation (OP) as a communication channel?’ and (2) ‘How are the hedonic factors affected by the two channels?’ can be answered respectively as follows. First, the two channels differ from each other in the way they transfer the message. VR channels is using special gear that allows for 360-degrees sound and visuals, while oral presentation channel requires real human presenters that make use of PowerPoint background to visualize and whom perform role plays to illustrate client situations. These features provide different opportunities for allowing feedback in the channel. It influences how information is perceived by activating different hedonic factors. A big difference was found in the degree of immersiveness between the two channels, the ability to immerse the participants in the channel. VR participants felt more engaged and could focus their attention better because of the immersiveness of the VR film. Lastly, self-discovery was a factor that emerged from the answers of the participants, where the OP had not enough interaction and ability to make active choices, the VR film provided options to choose which was valued highly.
To answer the second question, each hedonic factor of Hirschman and Holbrook (1982) was affected differently by the communication channels. In the VR channel hedonic factors were overall more positive which resulted into a better replication of the content of the vision. This positive presence of hedonic factors in communication channels implies that the participants enjoyed the experience more which positively influenced the vision transfer. The factor self-discovery was found to be a strong influencer on the hedonic factors, positively influencing the VR group, while the absence of it led to negative influence in the OR group. Self-discovery in this research was defined as a mix of power to make a choice (control) and active participation of an individual.
Theoretical implications
The communication theory of Shannon and Weaver (1949) has been an important communication theory in the last decades and was in this research applied to the communication of a vision. A few remarks with regard to the communication theory of Shannon and Weaver (1949) based on the results could be made. Firstly, the results confirm that the interpretation of the receiver gives meaning to the transferred message, for instance because in VR, hedonic factors as fantasy and role projection were visualized better and therefore more interpreted more conformingly to the vision and behavior that Albert Heijn tried to transfer.
Secondly, when a vision is communicated, the feedback loop as displayed in the model of Shannon and Weaver (1949) is seen as an important feature of the model to reduce semantic noise and in the end obtain a better result in communicating a certain message. Therefore, in this research the OP channel with a feedback-loop was compared to the VR channel without a feedback-loop. The OP channel shows little use of the feedback-loop by the participants. This can be because participants did not dare to ask, did not have the motivation to ask or did not had a question to ask. So, the feedback-loop that is ought to be very important regarding the model, was not used in the OP channel. On the other hand, in the VR channel where the feedback-loop was not present, better outcomes were measured. These results point therefore to the conclusion that maybe the features of the channel itself is more important in reducing semantic noise than a feedback-loop. If a channel delivers cut clear information, for instance by addressing imaginal and emotional factors adding self-discovery, this might outweigh the benefits of a feedback-loop.
Lastly, the emerged factor self-discovery could contribute to the theoretical framework of Holsapple and Wu (2007) which was based on the hedonic consumption theory of Hirschman and Holbrook (1982) which tries to provide insights into how these hedonic factors influence people’s responses to all sort of experiences, such as products or for instance, new technology, or for instance an oral presentation they see. In both VR channel and OP channel, respectively the presence and absence of self-discovery emerged from the answers of the participants and could be pointed out as a cause of influencing hedonic factors and thereby the replication of the content of the vision that was transferred. ‘The theory asserts that the main driver of hedonic consumption is the unique consumption experience, namely imaginal and emotional responses.’ (Lacher & Mizerski, 1994, p.366), but this research results point out that self-discovery could be a main driver too.
Practical implications
Managers could use the following insights from this study. Firstly, they could help themselves by
of interactivity and self-discovery, the plot could be made much more interactive than it was in this film, for instance by adding various answer options that adapt the film accordingly to a wrongly or right given answer. Third, with regard to the use of VR, a couple of things need to be considered. The costs on the creation of a VR film can differ a lot. It depends on the length, the equipment, the actors, the setting, shortly put: one can make it as big and expensive as you want. However, for starters, developing a film plus application such as the one used in this research with a length of about 8 minutes times 2, so
approximately 20 minutes and costs approximately €100.000,00 to produce. This is a big investment and might be above budget for many companies. It therefore needs to be considered whether the investment is worth it. Fourth, the users need to experience this via VR glasses. A Samsung gear VR set, which was used in this setting, costs around €100,00 per piece for the glasses and around €120,00 for a Skull Candy audio set, not even mentioning the costs for transporting these to everyone that uses it. However,
developments in VR gear will ensure that this price will lower in the future. The Albert Heijn app however, had a smart function that also gave an option to choose a 360 view, so that the film could also be viewed at a mobile phone screen, which was a solution to get around the high costs of equipment problem. Fifth, in companies that are widely dispersed, not only in real time distance, but for instance companies where there is a big difference between blue and white-collar workers, it could be very valuable to be able to take all employees to places where they would never come otherwise and this VR glasses can give that real feeling of presence instead to what an oral presentation with a PowerPoint with pictures could achieve.
Limitations
in the VR channel, the person felt as if he was in the supermarket versus a participant that only saw a presentation, although it was accompanied by screenshots from the film, it is logical that a VR film could fantasize better in the new role. Third, the setting wherein the research was performed for the oral presentation is not the same as it would be for new employees of Albert Heijn. These would maybe also be trained in a classroom, but one in the store of Albert Heijn, which would be a new environment for the employee and this acted customer dialogues in this setting might make more sense or impact on them. Also, for these real-to-be-employees, stakes would be much higher, and attention and retention of the message maybe would automatically be higher out of fear of losing the job when underperforming. Fourth, in order to obtain validity, this research setting demanded the exact same content to be transferred in both channels. The script of the VR film was used in the oral presentation to match the content in both channels, which could have felt a bit strange to the participants. This might also deviate from an oral presentation that would be given in the real business setting of a training from Albert Heijn. Fifth, because of limited possibilities in arranging participants that would really start working at Albert Heijn soon, participants were randomly chosen from a high school and the participants were maybe not interested at all in working at Albert Heijn, which could also cause lower amounts of hedonic factors.
Lastly, for most of the participants, this was the first time experiencing VR. It is therefore inherent that, seen their generation that is fully adapted to and engaged by screen technology, this experience was positively valued, and that the content of it could be subordinated to that new experience and their reaction. One could argue that maybe in the future, when everything would be transferred by VR, an oral presentation would enhance the same wow-effect, just because of its form. Nonetheless, the features of VR: having the possibility to take users to places without restrictions of time and costs, will an oral presentation is never be able to, so these will keep their value although people will get used to it.
Future research
In order to tackle the abovementioned limitations and to take this research further, a couple of recommendations could be made.
Firstly, it would be interesting to really map the added value of the 360-view that VR delivers by comparing a VR film that is adapted to a 2D film. Herein, the users will not have the ability to look around themselves, but the same content and information could be transferred, client situations can be shown. Secondly, it would be interesting to do a likewise test with participants that are real future employees of Albert Heijn and see how maybe a difference in motivation changes the results. Also, the dialogues in the research setting were performed by independent people from &samhoud media while in real life, employees or trainers from Albert Heijn would illustrate the presentation more by using
