Toward D2A: enhancing luxury fashion with seamless and immersive phygital customer experiences

This study explores direct-to-avatar (D2A) strategies—where brands engage directly with consumer avatars in virtual environments—in the luxury fashion retail sector, focusing on enhancing customer engagement and creating a seamless phygital (physical + digital) experience through virtual immersion. Situated at the crossroads of physical and digital realms, this research assesses how immersive experiences contribute to perceived seamlessness and customer engagement within D2A and direct-to-consumer (D2C) frameworks. Employing a mixed-method approach, including qualitative interviews with luxury fashion brand managers and three experimental design studies, this paper addresses the relatively underexplored effects of immersive experiences in marketing. Our findings reveal that immersion in D2A significantly boosts customer perceptions of channel seamlessness and engagement, with empowerment playing a key amplifying role in the seamlessness–engagement relationship. This paper enriches digital marketing strategies by highlighting the pivotal role of D2A in crafting engaging and unified customer experiences, offering luxury fashion marketing managers practical insights to thrive in the phygital landscape.