Virtual online worlds - Enabling technologies to establish interwoven relationships to network constituents in an emerging virtual marketspace

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1st, University of Lincoln (Faculty of Business & Law), course: International Marketing Strategy, language: English, abstract: Purpose

This dissertation analyses whether Second Life, as an emerging interactive

online environment, provides marketers with the scope to establish

interwoven relationships to network constituents, and highlights the

importance and benefits arising from enabling technologies to business

marketing operations.

Design / Methodology / Approach

The correlation to previous work was critically addressed with a focal point

set on relationship, and e-marketing approaches and strategies, whilst

highlighting the potential of an utilisation of virtual worlds / communities.

The methodological approach was of an inductive philosophy by

gathering information about Second Life from a corporate and an

individual point of view. This took the form of a self-administered Internetmediated questionnaire, a semi-structured telephone interview and a

participant observation.

Findings

Through a conceptual analysis of the virtual community of Second Life in

terms of exploring reasons for participation and benefits received from an

immersion into Second Life, the research study indicated that corporate

involvement in this innovative environment can offer marketers with

opportunities to establish relationships to existing and potential network

constituents.

Research Limitations / Implications

This marketing research study identified limitations due to its topical nature,

as the number of research publications is limited with regards to the

momentum of Second Life¿s innovative virtual 3-D environment and hence,

research in this arena is only just emerging and has not been empirically

tested. The evolving virtual world environment along with the possible

necessity for marketers to both establish a presence and demonstrate

innovative marketing approaches to capture a tech-savvy audience,

identify the implications for this dissertation.