The objective of this chapter is to introduce the element of trust and risk under alternative environments, and to analyse the electronic grocery and the virtual retail environments. Therefore, we provide the key findings from an empirical survey of UK grocery retail consumers purchasing from the Internet.

For more information about this book chapter please get in touch!

Reference: Bourlakis, M., Papagiannidis, S., & Fox, H. (Forthcoming). Trusting the Avatar: An examination of trust and risk factors in electronic and virtual retailing. In T. Kautonen & H. Karjaluoto (Eds.), Trust and New Technologies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Plan your first life trip to Holland by experiencing it before you arrive! New Holland: a great place to meet someone! And in case you have not figured it out, New Holland is the island of the first National Tourism Board in SL. Who said the hype is over?

The island has the look and feel of the city of Amsterdam, with a large canal crossing the entire island. It features cobblestone streets, bicycles, boats, typical Dutch architecture, bridges crossing the canals, Dutch flags, and tulip fields near a Dutch windmill. Visit “Club Gogh Gogh” or a brown cafe offering, a museum with Dutch masterpieces or simply visit
the island to obtain tourism information, located throughout “New Holland.” What is free? Postcards and tulips are given away to each visitor, enjoy a bike ride, a canal boat tour and drinks at the club. Not bad!

The 27th annual Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference will be held May 1-2, 2008 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (more…)

Japanese firms are eager to get into SL while Western firms seem to have had enough. This was based on LA Times article that has propagated throughout the Internet, with the majority of the articles just replicating the new found knowledge that plugging products is as problematic in the virtual world as it is anywhere else. Why would it be any different?

There are other ‘interesting’ statements. For example, did you know that even at peak times, only about 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on SL? Of course you did because that’s on the home page of Second Life. So how can that be an excuse for poor retailing performance? If that was an issue then why did these companies established a presence in SL? Another perhaps even more ‘interesting’ statement is that for some advertisers, the problem is that Second Life is a fantasy land. Was it the name that gave SL away?

In anyway, first mover advantage and adoption of new technologies always come with a certain risk tag and SL is no exception. Good marketing plans and clear objectives are needed as in any other case.

This event may be particularly relevant, after reports that real companies have second thoughts about SL.

Creating a virtual world presence to fast track your brand in the real world

September 25 - 26, 2007 · Thistle Hotel Marble Arch, London, UK

For more information please click here.

The following paper was accepted to the 1st Biannual International Conference “Strategic Developments in Services Marketing“. The paper is very topical as recently a number of real and virtual banks have appeared in metaverses. For example, MindArk auctioned five licences for Project Entropia, one of which was bought by Anshe Chung. The most interesting thing here is that they aim to offer the first financial market and financial services infrastructure that spans multiple virtual worlds.

Banking in Second Life: Marketing Opportunities and Repercussions

Savvas Papagiannidis, Michael Bourlakis, Michalis Vafopoulos

ABSTRACT
This paper presents two cases of real banks operating in metaverses, and more specifically within Second Life, in order to highlight the potential of such worlds as business and marketing platforms. We present the way the selected banks develop a business and marketing presence in the three dimensional environment by looking at the similarities and differences among their approaches. Subsequently, we emphasise the marketing implications of their approaches by examining the customer relationship management repercussions. At the end we provide further insights into this evolving and dynamic business phenomenon, highlighting specific avenues for future research.

Key Words: virtual worlds, electronic marketing, banks, customer relationship management, metaverses, Second Life

I came across a post at Shaping Thoughts pointing to a video clip of a demonstration of how e-CRM could be done in the future (well why not now?). Then again, thinking about it, visiting shops in SL only to find there is no customer representative there feels the same as the ‘All our representatives are currently offline’ buttons you often come across on contact pages. The web allows your site to be online 24/7, but not you!

Microsoft has come up with a puzzle game to promote the Visual Studio suite. 10 eggs containing puzzles have been hidden and as the players solve the puzzles, their game piece records the results. Solving all 10 of them will unlock the blimp and reveal the future (but not the lottery numbers!). Search for ‘Visual Studio’ and see how well you do.

The last few months a number of first-life businesses established a presence in Second Life. Then, they made sure everyone knew about it. For example, see the case of American Apparel and the media attention it received. It is not difficult to see why more and more followed claiming they were the first of their industry or market to appear in Second Life. The initial media hype that is more or less now behind us contributed significantly to Second Life’s population exceeding 6.5 million users. Perhaps ironically, the “build it and they will come” principle seems to have worked in this case. The problem is thought that if users do come and there is nothing to engage with, they will go… and probably not come back.

Looking at ebusiness adoption models such as the one in ‘eBusiness Maturity and Regional Development’ the vast majority of Second Life activities undertaken by first-life businesses are still at the very bottom of the maturity ladder. If the in-world economy is to develop further (and become substantial compared to the first life economy), these activities have to mature, providing at the same time critical connections to the real world. Then, Second Life would be a far more interesting place for those who don’t necessarily want to escape real life completely!

You can appreciate this from my point of view, the avatar’s point of view. If I had to buy a pair of shoes and all that shoe shops were doing was to advertise they sell shoes but only outside Second Life, would I be happy? Probably not!