Presenting Your Products in Virtual Reality: Do not Underestimate Cybersickness Kai Israel 1 , Christopher Zerres 1(&) , Dieter K. Tscheulin 2 , Lea Buchweitz 1 , and Oliver Korn 1 1 University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Badstrasse 24, 77652 Offenburg, Germany christopher.zerres@hs-offenburg.de 2 University of Freiburg, Platz der Alten Synagoge, 79085 Freiburg, Germany Abstract. For e-commerce retailers it is crucial to present their products both informatively and attractively. Virtual reality (VR) systems represent a new marketing tool that supports customers in their decision-making process and offers an extraordinary product experience. Despite these advantages, the use of this technology for e-commerce retailers is also associated with risks, namely cybersickness. The aim of the study is to investigate the occurrence of cyber- sickness in the context of the customer’s perceived enjoyment and the perceived challenge of a VR product presentation. Based on a conceptual research framework, a laboratory study with 533 participants was conducted to determine the influence of these factors on the occurrence of cybersickness. The results demonstrate that the perceived challenge has a substantially stronger impact on the occurrence of cybersickness, which can only be partially reduced by per- ceived enjoyment. When realizing VR applications in general and VR product presentations in particular, e-commerce retailers should therefore first minimize possible challenges instead of focusing primarily on entertainment aspects of such applications. Keywords: Cybersickness Á Virtual reality Á Product presentation Á User experience 1 Introduction In the last few years, virtual reality (VR) has become a very important instrument for companies to present their products in e-commerce. VR provides unique visualization possibilities and gives users the feeling of being in a different place. Especially in industries where products are dif ficult to evaluate by consumers prior to purchase, VR can support consumers during their decision-making process [1]. For example, large hotel chains such as Marriot and Hilton are already presenting hotels with VR. As with games, product presentations in VR provide an enjoyable user experience that awakens curiosity and challenges the potential guest [2]. Current study results show that modern VR applications for product presentation are suitable for both apparel retailing [3] and the tourism industry [4], and that they support customers in product assessment. Fur- thermore, it has been shown that consumers would purchase a virtual reality system if © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 F. F.-H. Nah and K. Siau (Eds.): HCII 2019, LNCS 11588, pp. 206–224, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22335-9_14 christopher.zerres@hs-offenburg.de