This study examines how consumers engage with embodied interactive technologies in physical retail, focusing on how bodily movement, emotional expression, and sensory feedback shape the in-store experience. It aims to extend the understanding of embodied experience in sports retail and inform the design of interactive, multisensory brand environments.
A video-based rapid ethnographic approach was applied in Nike's House of Innovation, Shanghai. Thirty hours of video data and field notes were analysed through multimodal interaction analysis and hybrid thematic coding to identify patterns of bodily engagement, emotional expression, and perception of feedback.
Embodied interaction in retail is a dynamic and socially mediated process. Consumers adapt their posture, rhythm, and gestures to visual and auditory feedback while expressing emotion through action and gaze. Engagement ranges from exploratory to immersive, influenced by environmental visibility and social context.
Conducted at a single site and within a single time frame, the findings have limited generalisability. Future work should compare interactive formats across contexts.
This study addresses the limitation of self-report and outcome-based approaches by using video-based multimodal analysis to capture embodied interaction in real time. It advances embodied interaction theory in consumer research by showing how experience is constructed through the coordination of bodily movement, sensory feedback, and emotion.
