Marketing in the Virtual World: Understanding Consumptive Behavior in Second Life

1. Anthony Cocciolo http://www.thinkingprojects.org cocciolo@tc.columbia.edu Consumer Behavior Columbia Graduate School of Business Marketing in the Virtual World:Understanding Consumptive Behavior in Second Life

2. Why do 3-D Virtual Environments have potential? Why do Virtual Worlds have potential?

3. Site for human creativity

4. Less Physical Restraints

5. Current Statistics are promising

6. Initial Intentions • Meta-analysis of scholarly research of consumptive behavior in SL. • One problem: relatively no existing research on the subject. • Academic research is in nascent stages • Association of Internet Researchers- Vancouver • Sloan Center @ UC Riverside – Novak & Hoffman

7. Live. Work. Play. Novak, T. From http://sloan.ucr.edu/

8. Cocciolo, A. (in review). Second Look: A Research Platform for Second Life. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.

9. Commercial Research GMI – Global Market Insite (March 2007, 479 Second Life users) 24% Because it is a creative outlet for me 24% To escape real life which I am not satisfied with 15% To be someone else and create my own cool avatar 11% To play and interact with other online community members 3% To enable me to fulfill the fantasies I can’t fulfill in real life 3% To buy/evaluate products that help me in my real life 3% To get freebees 2% To search for information that helps me in my real life 1% To make money

10. Research in SL is Difficult • Dual physical environments (RW and VW) • Television, web, other persons, in the background • Technological Innovation • E.g., introduction of voice in August 2007

11. The Alternative: Measure Opinion • Without much behavioral data, we will measure what people think are consumer tendencies in Second Life. • As evidenced in the blogosphere • Blog entry is opportunity for introspection • Commonalities with SPI • E.g., As an inhabitant of SL, I feel like X would engage me where Y would repel me.

12. Research Design • Research Question: What do people think are the features that influence consumer behavior in Second Life? • Context: The blogosphere • Procedure: • Read all blog entries where people discuss consumer behavior, advertising or marketing with Second Life as the context. • Within each blog entry, record: • The feature (e.g., billboards) • How satisfactory is X feature in promoting purchase behavior (good/bad) (1-7) • How important is the feature (1-7) • Record the Google PageRank of the blog to the position.

13. Google PageRank • Scores from 1-10 • Can be used as a measure of how influential a blog is.* • Initial interest: Be able to factor out “noise”. • Subsequent: See how influence changes rankings. Kirchhoff, L., Bruns, A., & Nicolai, T. (October, 2007). Investigating the Impact of the Blogosphere: Using PageRank to Determine the Distribution of Attention. Paper presented at Internet Research 8.0: Let's Play, , Vancouver, , Canada. Available at http://conferences.aoir.org/viewabstract.php?id=882&cf=6

14. Features that Influence Consumer Behavior Some features: • Billboards • Freebies with Brand-on-them • Freebies w/o Brand-on-them • Classified ads • Advertised on Search page • Use of SLURLs on web • A stall in a mall • Advertised on Avatar’s picks list

15. Analysis in progress Check out final results on website or paper: http://www.thinkingprojects.org

16. Thank you! Anthony Cocciolo – cocciolo@tc.columbia.edu – http://www.thinkingprojects.org