The one-month long AR exhibition Fun in the AiR, jointly created by Chengdu International Finance Square and British trend artist Jack Sachs, will run until May 17.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Since its opening, Fun in the AiR has already become a "check-in" hot spot in the city. It also serves as a unique recreational destination, where visitors can travel through the virtual and real worlds, and engage in all manner of activities that they enjoy doing, including playing mahjong, traveling, picnicking, exercising and spending time with pets, all accessed by scanning QR codes.

As there is no need to keep a safe distance from others in the virtual world, visitors are free to interact with the cute AR creations in the open air, and immerse themselves in this worry-free experience and embrace the fresh and sunny days.

"By creating an immersive scene combining virtual reality, traditional malls introduce unconventional strategies with fun and eye-catching shopping experiences to establish an emotional connection with their consumers amid the pandemic," says Guo Xin, a marketing professor at Beijing Technology and Business University.

"After the baptism of Pokemon Go! a few years ago, Chinese young people are no stranger to such digital technology innovation, which has transformed them into pioneers."

She also says the smoothness of AR reality augmentation technology brings individual consumers the "unique sense of participation".Each individual and group can freely "re-create" AR content according to their own preferences, and actively carry out "secondary communication", so that the individual's active "sharing" behavior can be virtually transformed into the "branding" result of this event. These content-led activities are likely to pull in a resurgence of offline consumption in the second half of the year.