Metaverse User Experience, Customer Engagement, and Brand Awareness Relation as SMEs Marketing Strategies in Virtual Worlds

Abstract

The application of the metaverse in business can be seen as an emerging application of media in communication technology especially marketing via new media technology, such as virtual reality. However, does the application of the metaverse to market products, especially in the fashion industry on a smaller business scale which uses simple metaverse tools, also have a positive effect on the product brand? Based on this, we want to see the relationship between variables related to the use of metaverse seen from the customer's perspective, namely metaverse user experience, customer engagement, and brand awareness in case studies of product marketing using metaverse carried out by the SME's industry in the fashion sector. Different from previous research, this research is action research that uses a simple metaverse application especially a virtual world to market fashion products in SME businesses, to see how it affects brand awareness of the products. This research was analyzed quantitatively to look at the relationship between metaverse user experience and brand awareness through the mediation of customer engagement. By using SMART PLS as a tool, we looked at the relationships between these variables among the 90 respondents we got. From the results we got, the metaverse user experience variable has a positive relationship with brand awareness through the mediation of customer engagement. The metaverse, especially the virtual world, is applied as a marketing strategy to increase brand awareness of fashion products in the SME business environment based on those variables.