Research Seminar: Professor Thorsten Hennig-Thurau

Title: Are VR Headsets the ‘Final Platform’ for Hedonic Media? Understanding Consumer Responses to High Immersive Virtual Experiences

Abstract: While proponents of virtual reality (VR) technology have argued that VR will be "the final platform" for hedonic media such as games, and companies like Meta and Apple have invested billions in the technology, VR headsets have not (yet) achieved a breakthrough as mass-market devices. This research aims to enhance the understanding of consumer responses to highly immersive gaming experiences by testing the fundamental assumption that accessing virtual worlds through high-immersion devices (referred to as the “final platform”) generates greater consumer value than using lower-immersion devices (such as PCs). We develop a conceptual model of value generation for hedonic consumption experiences in virtual worlds, drawing on self-determination and media theory, and test this model with experimental studies across two main types of hedonic consumption experiences in virtual worlds: high-fidelity gaming and metaverse gaming.

Bio: Thorsten Hennig-Thurau alias “ProfTHT” is Professor of Marketing at the University of Münster, Germany, and holds the Chair for Marketing & Media Research at the university's Marketing Center. He oversees the university’s M.B.A. in Marketing program and serves as Academic Director of the XRLab@MCM. Thorsten is consistently ranked as one of Germany’s leading business scholar; the Stanford study in PLOS lists him among the Top 100 most impactful marketing scholars globally (Rank 52 as of 2024). Thorsten’s work studies the digital and cultural economies and has been honored with several awards, including a Lifetime Award for Published Scholarly Contributions from the UCLA and the JAMS Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award in 2015, 2018, and also in 2023. His publications include the seminal article on 'EWOM' (cited more than 10k times) and the 900-pages monograph 'Entertainment Science', which has been downloaded almost 2 million times.

Note: Tea/coffee and sandwiches will be served between 12-1pm at room 419.

Photographs will be taken during this seminar and may be shared on social media. If you do not wish to appear, please notify tbs.research@tcd.ie.