Professor Wang Zhongbin: To Adopt or Not: The Paradox of AR Fitting Technology in Retail Channels

In a collabrative effort involving Professor Wang Zhongbin from the Institute of Systems Engineering at the College of Management and Economics, researchers use a queueing game model to reveal that while AR fitting technology reduces physical retail congestion, it simultaneously introduces mismatch risks due to inaccurate virtual representations.

Their findings titled "To Adopt or Not: The Paradox of AR Fitting Technology in Retail Channels," with Professor Wang Zhongbin as the corresponding author, was published online in Information Systems Research, a top international journal in the field of information systems.

This research was completed by Professor Li Yongjian and doctoral student Yao Song from the Business School of Nankai University, and Professor Wang Zhongbin and doctoral student Guo Yanqiong from the College of Management and Economics at Tianjin University.

The study focuses on the application of augmented reality (AR), a cutting-edge digital technology, in physical retail settings. Methodologically, the team introduced a queueing game model into AR-driven information systems research for the first time, achieving a critical extension from traditional operations analysis to the context of digital technology, and systematically revealing that AR can both alleviate congestion and improve efficiency, while also potentially introducing mismatching risks due to information inaccuracy. This achievement not only explores the cutting-edge topic of AR technology application but also marks a significant breakthrough by local scholars at the intersection of service systems and information systems.

This paper has received multiple important academic honors, including the Best Student Paper Award at the 16th International Workshop on Behavioral Operations Management (BOM), the Second Prize for Best Paper at the 26th International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC), and the First Prize for Best Paper at the 20th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management (ICSSSM).

Wang Zhongbin: Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University. He serves as Principal Investigator for the National Natural Science Foundation of China Excellent Young Scientist Fund project and was selected for the 8th batch of the China Association for Science and Technology Young Talent Lifting Program. He has published numerous academic papers as first author or corresponding author in UTD-24 top international journals including MS, OR, ISR, MSOM, and POM. His research interests include stochastic service operations and queueing economics. He has published the monograph Innovative Priority Mechanisms in Service Operations: Theory and Applications on queueing economics with Springer.

Guo Yanqiong: A doctoral student enrolled in the 2023 cohort at the College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University. Her main research interests include platform economics and stochastic service operations. She has participated in several projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

For more information of the article, please visit:

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/isre.2024.1425

By College of Management and Economics

Editor: Sun Xiaofang