Exploring the impacts of Virtual Reality on Business Models: the Case of the Media Industry

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology with a large potential to disrupt businesses. However, impacts of VR on companies have remained largely unexplored. We seek to fill this research gap with the business model concept as a well-structured foundation. Using the example of the media industry as one of the industries most affected by VR, our qualitative study classifies different types of VR applications and contents to assess their impacts on a business model’s components. We distinguish between the internal use of VR applications in companies (e.g., for conferencing and collaborating) and the production and distribution of VR content for external use (e.g., videos and games). The findings show that the impact of VR on companies that produce and distribute VR contents for external purposes is large and even increases when more technologies are needed to create content and when the content is more interactive. Compared to this, VR’s impact on companies that merely use the technology for internal purposes is small. Our analysis also shows that the business model concept is well suited to analyze technology adoption at the firm level. Thus, we suggest its future use to methodically advance this research stream.