Introduction—Scope and Overview

In this chapter of Introduction, we provide the reader with an overview of this book and briefly explain its purpose, core concepts, distinctive perspectives, and organization of chapters. The purpose of this book is to evolve a new concept—phygital realityPhygital reality—and cover the development of research on consumption, service, and communication in the phygital reality marketPhygital reality market. The new technologies are augmenting physical realityPhysical reality, allowing the physical, digital, and virtual realmsVirtual realm to amalgamate into one world. Nowadays, we are living in a world of multiple realities or intermingled realities. At first, we elaborate on the concept of phygital reality and discuss the application of digital, smart, and extended reality (XR)Extended reality (XR) technologies in omni-channel retailingOmni-channel retailing and metaverseMetaverse. Next, we discuss the use of new technologies to enable value realization as well as their influence on consumers. It will reflect the latest thinking on how to manage the challenges of new technologies in the value creationValue creation and co-creation processCo-creation process. From the perspective of customersPerspective of customer and end users, we finally describe the comprehensive and dynamic process of consumer decision-makingDynamic process of consumer decision-making and consumer behaviorConsumer behavior in the phygital reality market.