PhD researcher wanting to interview residents about in-world shopping habits

[JUSTUS Palianta]

This thread is funny.

Love makes people buy virtual stuff.  Try and compute that and put it in a square.

Edited December 4, 2022 by JUSTUS Palianta

[Maryanne Solo]

I'd love to arrange an interview, but I am resting on the floor.
Because I shopped until I ......

Edited December 4, 2022 by Maryanne Solo

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

What Zuck&Co. are envisioning is a digital duplicate of the the Real World, where real companies advertise and sell real products. We may use avatars to browse the stores of The Metaverse, but our purchases will be delivered to our doors in real life.

Zuck&Co. have no use for games, they're dreaming of real commerce.

Unfortunately, impressive-sounding theoretical pronouncements notwithstanding, I very much fear that Lindal is right about this.

When the latest Metaverse craze started ramping up a few years ago, I noticed that at least 3/4 of the tweets about it that were appearing on my timeline were predicated upon the assumption that this was mostly a wonderful new marketing opportunity for companies. That's not an exaggeration -- and I don't even follow marketers on Twitter.

Zuckerberg and others aren't really interested in providing us with a new frontier to explore ourselves, connect with others, and experience things beyond the more limited horizons of our sublunary lives.

They want to create a new and more effective way of marketing and selling things to us.

They want our money.

[Love Zhaoying]

Maybe OP is getting a PhD in Marketing.

[GuliaMCR]

@Love Zhaoying, you are right, I am getting PhD in Marketing. Thre is not such a degree as a phd in Metaverse yet;)

[GuliaMCR]

I see that lots of people is asking questions about my background and if I am qualified to do research about Metaverse and virtual worlds:) It is completely new topic for me but i find it fascinating. I am the only one who is studying it at my univerisity and in general there are not a lot of researchers who are doing it, because it is relatively new topic. I have previous background and 7 years working expereince in market research and retail, but the topic of virtual worlds attracted my attention more and i have decided to learn it despite that I am new to it.

I am meeting with people who are working in the Metaverse/ virtual worlds industry, but I see that majority of professionals in industry are facing the same uncertaintly. That''s why my starting point was to study users of virtual worlds. I started with forums, but little by little I am starting to use some of platforms. I hope it will help me with future research.

Thanks everyone who filled the survey, I really appreciate it. Also, I agree that some questions are a bit complicated,  but it is an academic survey, which differs a lot from regular market research surveys-I can say it from my professional experience:) Thanks again everyone who participate and sorry that my request created some negative feedback.

Edited December 5, 2022 by GuliaMCR
addon

[GuliaMCR]

Talking about the term "Metaverse"-yes, I use the Neal Stephenson term. I guess the confusion is created with the fact that people thought that I imply to Zucherberg's Meta. In fact, i use term "metaverse" to define virtual world with social characteristics (as opposed to pure gaming virtual world). Lesson learned-I will be more careful with terms.

[GuliaMCR]

@Scylla Rhiadra, thanks a lot for all your feedback, its very helpful. @animats-thanks for suggestion to contact people directly in vurtual worlds, I will definately will do it. @Cinos Field , @Scylla Rhiadrai can share the results of the article, but it will take some time. Also, I can share the results of this particular survey, when it will be completed. @Arduenn Schwartzman, I am a phd student:)

[Coffee Pancake]

Your approach almost guarantees you will entirely miss the point and fail to grasp why people use these platforms .. or in meta's case, refuse to use that platform.

[GuliaMCR]

@Coffee Pancake, thanks for your comment. My goal is not to understand why people use these platforms, rather to understand purchasing behavior of people who are already using the plattform and which platform and virtual product characteristics make stronger impact on virtual products purchasing intention.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 hours ago, GuliaMCR said:

I see that lots of people is asking questions about my background and if I am qualified to do research about Metaverse and virtual worlds:) It is completely new topic for me but i find it fascinating. I am the only one who is studying it at my univerisity and in general there are not a lot of researchers who are doing it, because it is relatively new topic. I have previous background and 7 years working expereince in market research and retail, but the topic of virtual worlds attracted my attention more and i have decided to learn it despite that I am new to it.

I am meeting with people who are working in the Metaverse/ virtual worlds industry, but I see that majority of professionals in industry are facing the same uncertaintly. That''s why my starting point was to study users of virtual worlds. I started with forums, but little by little I am starting to use some of platforms. I hope it will help me with future research.

Thanks everyone who filled the survey, I really appreciate it. Also, I agree that some questions are a bit complicated,  but it is an academic survey, which differs a lot from regular market research surveys-I can say it from my professional experience:) Thanks again everyone who participate and sorry that my request created some negative feedback.

I'm not sure how directly relevant it is, but there has of course been a fair amount of academic research on the subject of virtual or "synthetic" economies. Edward Castranova was a pioneer in that field, although I don't think he's produced anything on the subject in a while. Of course, with the advent of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs, the picture has changed quite a bit over the past few years.

You might also check The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research if you haven't already: it's online and free access. It's been on hiatus, however, since 2020.

Second Life is unique not merely because it was the first really successful virtual world, but also because, astonishingly, it works. It's been around now for over 19 years, and, although niche and small, continues to make a profit, and has a very robust internal economy. Quite a while ago it went through many of the teething pains that other newer platforms are just now experiencing -- rampant land speculation, ponzi schemes and scams, and economic instability.

 Consumerism is a huge part of the in-world experience and appeal of the platform; I don't have numbers to throw at you, but I'm pretty sure that it's much more important now than it was, say, 10 years ago. Although it is out of date, a good place to get a sense of the social dimension of "owning things" might be Tom Boellstorff's classic anthropological study, Coming of Age in Second Life, which was first published, I think, in 2008 (coincidentally, my first year in SL).

My general sense of "marketing" in SL is a bit hazy -- I did at one point long ago own a bookstore, but I didn't "market" it in any consistent way. There are, however, creators on this forum who do. Marketing is a bit haphazard, I think. It uses social media a fair bit, but there are relatively few tools in-world to assist with it, other than "groups" associated with particular stores or businesses. Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook are all common places to advertise. Many creators, especially the bigger ones, employ "bloggers" who, in exchange for free stuff, feature items from a store in photos on these platforms. Blogging goods is very big here.

And increasingly over the past few years, "events" -- weekly, monthly, or annual shopping fairs -- have become very big and important, and now proliferate. Most (but not all) of these are features on Seraphim, which has (in Second Life) an enormous reach, and is unquestionably the most important non-Linden Lab site and resource.

My own sense is that consumerism in SL is very peer-driven. Strictly speaking, there are very few (if any) things that one "needs" in Second Life -- you can have a relatively good experience here just using the default starter avatars and/or freebie goods fairly widely available (although sometimes hard to find). In practice though one's social status, and the degree to which one can successfully and fully integrate oneself into the communities one finds here, is very much dependent on how "good" and up-to-date one's avatar looks, so avatar customization is huge.

The most important components of that are clothing (there are thousands of clothing stores, some very large and successful), mesh bodies, and mesh heads. The latter two tend, I think, to be particularly susceptible to peer pressure: they are dominated by a small handful of merchants, and the market tends to be very susceptible to trends and a desire to own "the new shiny." The success of mesh head makers like LeLutka (by far the most popular current creator of these), or mesh body makers such as Legacy, Kupra, eBody, or Maitreya (this latter still dominant, but now slipping) certainly owes something to conventional marketing, but more, I think, to peer pressure and the desire to be "up to date."

I suspect you'll find that other VW platforms are very different in their approach to economics, consumerism, and marketing -- although there is some overlap: some creators here produce for other platforms as well. The irony is that what SL, as "old" and out-of-date as it is in some respects, has done works very well, and continues to sustain an economy that is actually larger, more robust, and more profitable than any of these other platforms. And I suspect that's because most of the newer ones are more interested in "real life" economics (and also, frankly, scams) than SL has historically been.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, GuliaMCR said:

@Coffee Pancake, thanks for your comment. My goal is not to understand why people use these platforms, rather to understand purchasing behavior of people who are already using the plattform and which platform and virtual product characteristics make stronger impact on virtual products purchasing intention.

That sounds like "Marketing" research! 🙂

[GuliaMCR]

@Scylla Rhiadra, thank you very much for such thorough answer! Yes, I am using a lot of insights coming from the articles from Journal of Virtual Worlds research, as you suggested. Marketing academic journals barely cover this topic. I also agree that SL is very different and in academic literature it is also called pro-metaverse. There were many studies done on SL and one more platform 10 years ago, however, just as you have mentioned, the research needs to be updated because of technological changes and consumer behavior changes. I already see that SL community is very different from other communities. Even in this chat, despite all the negative feedback community is very engaging.

Again thanks a lot for your contribution.

Sincerely,

Gulia 

[Caeruleiae]

5 hours ago, GuliaMCR said:

@Coffee Pancake, thanks for your comment. My goal is not to understand why people use these platforms, rather to understand purchasing behavior of people who are already using the plattform and which platform and virtual product characteristics make stronger impact on virtual products purchasing intention.

You'll never understand the spending habits of people who use these platforms and worlds if you don't even attempt to understand why they use them in the first place. They go hand in hand with one another. People on the forums are only a very small sample and you're more likely to get mostly biased answers with such a small sample pool. You don't even understand how the platforms you want to cover work or why people are in them. How can you understand their spending habits if you spend no time in them spending money yourself?  This kind of research needs a little more hands on work, at least it did when I studied marketing and business, which is more what you're going towards it seems.

There's a lot of information out there about virtual spaces, even spending habits. You have to be willing to actually put the work in to find it, and you're not doing that. I think you picked what you thought would be an easy topic because people, wrongly, seem to think there is little information. At a PhD level, I would expect a lot better work than a random survey like this. I think it's great you're trying to gather information, but I don't think it's great that you're unwilling to put in the actual work to find it yourself. I'd question the credentials of anyone that approved this research method. Even the professors I had when getting my MBA would look at me and laugh if I tried this. We were required to put a lot more thought and work into things, even at that level. 

[Maryanne Solo]

You must! must!! must!!! pop inworld, after selecting a pre-made avatar, (one that you connect with, visually, mentally & spiritually),
and buy something, (clothing is a very good option), then primp and preen over the result.🤩🥰
Take some pics, go somewhere public, see if anyone says "oh wow that's nice!" etc etc.
Or watch a video of an SL avatar doing exactly this.
Be warned it can be very complicated to get a wonderful result. Ask peoples opinions on all of this first.

Eg: Wearing my older/less popular, (but still very lovely) mesh body, I went to one of the most amazing designers stores
and "zombied"😆 towards a gorgeous bodysuit, (as one does ^^ ), & bought it thinking "oooh yeah - gothy ginger!"
Only to find after the purchase, it didn't suit that exact mesh body.🙄😭
I do have one of the bodies it does fit properly, but yeah...not my fave body by any means.🤔 
If I read everything BEFORE the purchase and it was suitable - I would wear it, (combinations of), for the next 6 months lol.
It's just as much fun buying stuff in SL as in RL for me. (most of the time).
Try it yourself perhaps? 😃

Edited December 6, 2022 by Maryanne Solo

[animats]

On 12/4/2022 at 1:55 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

When the latest Metaverse craze started ramping up a few years ago, I noticed that at least 3/4 of the tweets about it that were appearing on my timeline were predicated upon the assumption that this was mostly a wonderful new marketing opportunity for companies.

Yes. And it was a total failure. (With the one exception of Roblox, where a few brands, notably Nike, have found some success with the middle schoolers.) Nothing has succeeded. Horizon usage is shrinking. The only thing that's really growing is VRchat, and that's not brand-oriented.

[GuliaMCR]

@Caeruleiae, you are completely right. Actually, I am already interacting on platfoms themselves and collecting info from there as well, but for now it is more qualitative insights... My previous response was in regards of this particular survey. The point is that i cannot cover all topics within one survey. The focus of this particular survey to understand the features of platform and products. In fact, all the constructs that i am measuring are well establish in the academic literature already. The topic you have mentioned is very important, however, as i have mentioned i cannot cover everything in one paper. Thanks for you comment and contribution!

[GuliaMCR]

@Maryanne Solothanks for sharing your expereince! Yes, I am already on platform and interacting with people, but i am still using my standard avatar and I have not purchased anything yet by myself. It takes a bit of time:) Thanks for warning me about some issues though!

[GuliaMCR]

@animatsin my opinion the result will come, but in longer time when the digitally native generation will become a majority and when companies will create actual interactive useful content on the platforms. But it is only my personal opinion.

[Sasy Scarborough]

Applauds @GuliaMCRfor keeping their cool through the whole four pages I just read, because wow were there some that just grabbed you by the teeth and started shaking their heads, but did also turn that back around ♥. I also can get very protective of Second Life overall, and I do agree that spending some time in Second Life and doing what you are asking about would be a great way to not only experience but also observe. I am not sure if this was made clear, but you can do everything mentioned without spending, just for more experience.

There are many stores that have groups that once you join them you can get free/gift items, and those can create the same rush of YAY GIMME GIMME GIMME as purchasing can, depending on the creator and item. There is also a very strong thrill from just trying on DEMOS of items, whether your taste or within your budget, seeing first hand and on your own avatar the skill required to make items is sometimes literally breathtaking. There have been many times that I have purchased things just so that the person that put that much talent into it got that monetary thumbs up so to speak.

Hair is my personal crack, no exaggeration I have times in the past when we used to have to wait much longer for releases, felt like I was having withdrawal symptoms, would search the whole grid for something I did not already own that would make me happy. I once not during a SALE purchased 13 styles in one go because of that incredible rush of finding 13 styles I did not own. 

It would be cool if you came back after a week or so of spending time on the grid and did another survey based on experiences you yourself have had, for example question one you combine things in a way that are not often comparable in this platform. Such as Clothing and Skins being together, when a Skin is often something someone wears every day for a length of time that can vary from a few days, a few weeks or in some cases years, to clothing that we can often change on the hour. Then animations and emojis are not a grouping we even have, we have animations and static poses, and depending on what you do in SL you can never buy a static, have only one Animation Over-rider, or have thousands of poses and animations due to all kinds of uses, modeling, blogging, photography, advertisement posters etc. 

I saw you mention that it was mixed because of the way it was being formatted by your school, but it would be great to have you come back with your own survey because you are interested to know more. Many in here would welcome that commitment I am sure.

Marketing in Second Life is a whole other thing, we use a lot of resources here, ones that over time were developed by Residents to expand the reach of their products, or by Residents who wanted to share their skills at finding content. There are marketing groups in world, groups on many Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter, Plurk and so on. Stores do their own Marketing as well as using Bloggers to spread to their own Audience, it really is something that based on what you have said you would be really impressed by. There are shopping events, shopping groups, yearly events for charity based on shopping and donations, there are systems that people have created where creators pay to use those tools to promote. There are also full Magazines of just Second Life content put together each month by truly creative teams. 

Regardless of what you do end up doing, I truly hope that you come back at some stage and let us know that you did get that chance and take that time to look more into the very complex platform that is Second Life. Good luck with your education, being the first to take on a new course must be an exciting challenge also.

 

EDIT: came back to giggle at the do you think you will purchase virtual items in the next 6 months - for us it would be next 6 minutes (even seconds) they really did mix up everything with other platforms, it is a shame that happened. 

Edited December 6, 2022 by Sasy Scarborough
giggling

[Love Zhaoying]

@GuliaMCR- some of the feedback is colored by our cumulative experience as a group, having been sent multiple surveys over time. In no way do I think you should take any comments personally.

I disagree with those who say you should  login to Second Life and try it yourself, assuming you are attempting to perform unbiased research.

[Rowan Amore]

https://www.seraphimsl.com/

[animats]

6 hours ago, GuliaMCR said:

@animatsin my opinion the result will come, but in longer time when the digitally native generation will become a majority and when companies will create actual interactive useful content on the platforms. But it is only my personal opinion.

Now this is something that you, the researcher, can work on in Second Life. Second Life has both in-world stores and web- based stores. Most sellers have their products on both. Ask sellers what fraction of their sales comes from the in-world stores vs the web stores. Do people who go to in-world stores and shopping events buy there, or do they buy on the Web?

We already have "actual useful interactive content" on the platform. Go to a vehicle store in Second Life and take a test drive. Go to a house store and walk through the houses. Go to an animation store and try some animations. In SL, all those things are real, right now.

Edited December 6, 2022 by animats

[Love Zhaoying]

16 minutes ago, animats said:

Now this is something that you, the researcher, can work on in Second Life. Second Life has both in-world stores and web- based stores. Most sellers have their products on both. Ask sellers what fraction of their sales comes from the in-world stores vs the web stores. Do people who go to in-world stores and shopping events buy there, or do they buy on the Web?

We already have "actual useful interactive content" on the platform. Go to a vehicle store in Second Life and take a test drive. Go to a house store and walk through the houses. Go to an animation store and try some animations. In SL, all those things are real, right now.

Awesome feedback, @animats!

@GuliaMCR- just to add, most people will NOT "buy without a demo"!  So, they can see / use / try the thing before they purchase it. (Demos are available for many items both on the "markeplace" site, and in-world as Animats said.)

[CaithLynnSayes]

On 12/2/2022 at 4:19 PM, GuliaMCR said:

@Coffee Pancakethank you for your contribution, i highly appreciate it. Yes, I am new to this community as well as to other Metaverse communities and this topic is new to me. However, I am trying to learn step by step and hope people will share their experiences and help me.

Thanks again for your time.

Have a nice weekend.

Gulia

That answer only proves you didn't read/understand what @Coffee Pancake said.

I for one won't be clicking that link or contribute to your questionnaire.

Go spend time in SL.