Special Issue: Virtual Worlds
Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 29, 2013, Issue 13-14

Editorial: Marketing beyond the frontier? Researching the new marketing landscape of virtual worlds
Mike Saren, Tracy Harwood, Janet Ward & Alladi Venkatesh

Exploring real-brand meanings and goods in virtual-world social interaction: Enhanced rewards, rarity, and realism
Sara Steffes Hansen
“In virtual worlds, real-life brands develop co-created meanings in social interaction involving users, platform, and marketers. Whilst research has focused on brands advertised in online venues, marketers are challenged to know how users experience brands socially and interactively in virtual worlds, and potential outcomes of those experiences. This article explores meanings of brands and branded virtual goods through user interviews from one virtual world with brands integrated into social interaction …” Read more >

Modelling the determinants of a simulated experience in a virtual retail store and users’ product purchasing intentions
Savvas Papagiannidis, Eleonora Pantano, Eric W.K. See-To & Michael Bourlakis
“In the past few years, virtual worlds have become increasingly popular, often hosting, in addition to gaming and social activities, commercial activities that can potentially not just cater for in-world demand but also go beyond the virtual environment’s boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of users’ simulated experience in a virtual store and to show the subsequent impact of that experience on engagement …” Read more >

Metaverse-retail service quality: A future framework for retail service quality in the 3D internet
Eman Gadalla, Kathy Keeling & Ibrahim Abosag
“This study argues that service quality in retailing in 3D Collaborative Virtual Environments (aka Metaverses) is distinct from service quality in the more familiar 2D, mainly menu-driven, web internet store (e-SQ) and conceptualises the determinants of Metaverse Retailing service quality (MR-SQ) through a combination of focus groups and Critical Incident Technique with current users of Metaverse retail stores …” Read more >

At world’s end: Exploring consumer-marketer tensions in the closure of adverworlds
Daiane Scaraboto, Leah Carter-Schneider & Richard Kedzior
“While extant research has primarily studied methods and measures of virtual world marketing, we examine complications that arise when marketers create and subsequently close virtual worlds. Adverworlds are virtual worlds created for marketing purposes in which consumers contribute to building a brand-centric virtual world  …” Read more >

Electronic sports: A new marketing landscape of the experience economy
Yuri Seo
“Competitive computer gaming (eSports) has emerged as an important aspect of virtual-world consumption. This paper advances the concept of eSports consumption in marketing by developing the experiential perspective of competitive gaming as an assemblage of multiple interrelated experiential performances, which traverse the virtual and real worlds …” Read more >

Redistributed consumer desire in digital virtual worlds of consumption
Janice Denegri-Knott & Mike Molesworth
“The aim of this paper is to discuss and illustrate how the use of software available in digital virtual worlds of consumption, including wish lists, watch lists, and digital virtual goods (DVGs), interact with consumer desiring practices …” Read more >

Commentary: Virtuality as place and process
Nikhilesh Dholakia & Ian Reyes
“Virtual worlds are conventionally understood as representational places, or alternate realities more or less set apart from the real world. However, in considering new and emergent technologies, such as social media sites and augmented reality devices, which complicate any easy distinction between virtual and real, we contend that virtuality should also be understood as a matter of process, or the means by which virtualisation is realised …” Read more >

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