Challenges and Solutions for Applying New Technologies in Iranian Marketing(Case Study: Augmented Reality (AR) Technology)

Popular technologies today certainly include augmented reality technology. The application of augmented reality technology in the field of business, marketing, and promotion of products and services has its potential and its reasons. Despite the popularity of this new technology in developed countries, its use in the Iranian marketing industry has been neglected. Therefore, the present study is a qualitative study of the challenges and solutions to using this new technology in Iranian marketing. First, to collect qualitative data, a semi-structured interview questioning framework with experts according to the technology acceptance model was developed. Next, 12 executives with experience in the field of augmented reality technology were selected according to the snowball sampling method. The second phase interviews were coded using Braun and Clarke's six-step inductive thematic analysis using MaxQDA software. The results show that there are a total of 2 main topics and 6 sub-topics. Key topics include the challenges of using augmented reality in the Iranian marketing industry and solutions for using augmented reality in the Iranian marketing industry and sub-topics include Challenges from the customers' perspective, challenges from the service provider's perspective, challenges from the technology perspective, solutions from a customer perspective, solutions from a service provider perspective, solutions from a technology perspective.

Augmented reality technology is one of the modern information visualization technologies. Today's popular technologies undoubtedly include augmented reality (AR) technology. The application of augmented reality technology in the field of business, marketing, product promotion, and services has its potential and justification. Despite the spread of this new technology in developed countries, the use of this technology in the Iranian marketing industry has been neglected. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the challenges and solutions to using this new technology in the Iranian marketing industry.

This qualitative research is exploratory in terms of approach. To collect qualitative data, a framework was developed to conduct semi-structured interviews with experts according to technology acceptance models. Then, 12 experienced executive experts in the field of augmented reality technology were selected by the snowball sampling method. The interviews in the second phase were coded using Braun and Clarke's six-step inductive thematic analysis method by MaxQDA20 software.

The results showed that a total of 2 main themes and 6 sub-themes were obtained. The main themes include challenges of using augmented reality technology in the Iranian marketing industry, and solutions for using augmented reality technology in the Iranian marketing industry, and sub-themes include challenges from the customer’s perspective, challenges from the service providers’ perspective, challenges from the technology perspective; solutions from the customer's perspective, solutions from the service providers’ perspective, and solutions from the technology perspective.

Based on the findings of this research, the lack of specific laws in the field of new technology legislation, the impact of social and political events in the country on internet filtering and bandwidth reduction, as well as the lack of support for developers, are the most important challenges of using new technologies in Iran. The specialists of this research stated that in order to solve these challenges, the capacity of neighboring countries should be used for technological issues, and also by teaching how to understand new technologies in schools and kindergartens, the culture of using these technologies will spread among the people. It has also been suggested that augmented reality technologies must be used in television advertisements so that people realize the advantages of using this technology.