The place of augmented reality technology in advertising and marketing applications

With the developing technology and globalizing world, businesses have started to implement different strategies to reach consumers in order to sell their products. Considering that purchasing behavior is an act of pleasure for the consumer, it is on the agenda to offer special experiences to consumers in order to reach consumers and create purchase intention. As the strategies implemented change and differentiate day by day, consumers have become more valuable than products for businesses. In this process, when a product is purchased, more attention is paid to the current experience rather than the product, which has created the concept of experiential marketing. With the understanding of experiential marketing, businesses have realized that they treat consumers more carefully and become loyal customers, and with this strategy, they influence the consumer's purchase intention by offering consumers a unique experience. On the other hand, with the development of technology, competition strategies between businesses have started to change. Businesses have started to implement new sales strategies to maintain their sustainability. One of these applications is augmented reality technology. In the rapidly developing information age, technology is constantly evolving and innovative approaches with digital media and current developments have emerged to change people's daily lives. In this context, technological developments have evolved with unique perspectives on the functioning of the world, and augmented reality, a new concept, has started to be used in many areas. Augmented Reality, a technology that provides simultaneous interaction between real and virtual by combining real and virtual images, has recently started to be used in parallel with the changes in technology in areas such as health, education, aviation, defense, architecture, marketing, publishing, travel, real estate, automotive, museology, advertising, entertainment, digital games. In this study, the development process of Augmented Reality technology, which has become very popular recently, its usage areas and recent developments on digital media were examined and its application areas and usage purposes were evaluated. Again, the concepts of advertising and marketing, which are among the application areas of augmented reality, were defined and the place of augmented reality technology in these concepts was evaluated. The research covers the use of augmented reality technology in digital media. In this respect, it is limited to examples of advertising and marketing types that can be technically applied by brands and organizations using augmented reality technology in digital media. As a data collection tool, since it is a qualitative study, studies on augmented reality technology that previously existed in the literature were examined, and in this context, examples of advertising and marketing using augmented reality technology were analyzed. Typical case sampling was used in the research. In this context, the subject, importance, objectives, limitations and method of the research were explained systematically. The findings were interpreted in the light of the literature and conclusions were reached.