Exploring barriers to adoption of Virtual Reality through Social Media Analytics and Machine Learning – An assessment of technology, network, price and trialability

Abstract This paper aims to assess how diffusion of Virtual Reality (VR) technology is taking place and identify potential barriers to increased adoption. This is done by utilising Social Media Analytics to collect a data set covering an empirical material of 6044 user-generated content concerning the market‑leading VR headsets Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and machine learning to identify critical barriers to adoption. Our findings suggest that there is a lack of sufficient technological performance of these headsets and that more applications are required for this technology to take off. We contribute to literature on VR by providing a systematic assessment of current barriers to adoption while also pointing out implications for marketing.

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