Abstract/Summary

Augmented Reality (AR) technology is sought to transform consumer experiences into extraordinary experiences, enhance human imagination, and extend the human mind to become a cyborg. The aim of this study is to explore consumers’ imagined moments of AR extraordinary experiences; and how consumers imagine reality and the self when using AR. By employing mixed qualitative methods (diary-interview method and online reviews), I posit that AR has a mind which works as a mental assistant for the human mind and lead consumers to experience double-minds. However, when other people are involved in the imagination process, consumers experience multiple-minds. This process works in two ways. First, AR’s mind mentally assists the human mind to visualise fun and bewildering fun moments (i.e., enjoyable frustrating moments) which lead to AR extraordinary experiences in a phenomenon which I call AR-Human Assisted Imagination. Second, when imagining reality and the self, the human mind decides to assist AR’s mind to imagine the surrounding reality and their own self in a phenomenon which I call Human-AR Assisted Imagination. This imagination mechanism is an attempt to enforce reality via a recursive comparison between the multisensory system, self-referencing, self-interest, and the internal and external environment. However, eventually, consumers have lowered their expectations to see reality on AR and accept what I call blended-Reality. The latter means reality is a moderate balance between the fantasy world and the real world (i.e., approximation of reality). These findings present novel theoretical contributions to the literature of AR extraordinary experiences and AR imagination which includes the extended-mind.