By some estimates, more than 10 million people spend $10 to $15 a month to subscribe to online role-playing environments, with the number of subscribers doubling every year. Millions more enter free sites, some of them sponsored by companies as brand-building initiatives. Many users spend upward of 40 hours a week in these worlds. From these statistics and improved technology, I reasonably believe someday virtual world may take over other entertainment because instead of watching someone else’s story on a screen, users in the virtual worlds create and live out their own stories. So I believe there is significant value in doing research on avatar marketing.
According to Hemp (2004), avatar is a being you’ve created as a representation of yourself in this online environment. That means “Avatar” encompasses not only complex being created for use in a shared virtual reality but also virtual representation of a user in an online community. There are 2 types of avatars based games: one is combat focused games such as EverQuest, Lineage, world of warcraft. The other is social interaction provision games: Second life and Entropia Universe which aimed at adults and Sims online and Habbo Hotel: teenager oriented
I believe all of you watch the movie Avatar and Surrogates, in these two movies, one is using the avatar to get access to different planet which is a undeveloped wild world and the other one is to the real world which is a civilized challenging world. So the way you create your avatar will be different when you use them in different situations and different environments. Both of the movies above is a success and bring a lot of value to producers. The real cases prove avatar marketing is attractiveness to customers as well as an indicator of profits. Why avatar marketing is distinct that can bring in so much value to people? Instead of targeting passive eyeballs, marketers here have the opportunity to interact with engaged minds to achieve marketing purpose.By marketing online, you can create sustained engagements rather than a click through to purchase. The avatar, though, arguably represents a distinctly different “shadow” consumer, one able to influence its creator’s purchase of real-world products and conceivably make its own real-world purchases in the virtual world. At the least, it may offer insights into its creator’s hidden tastes. So here is an issue: to what extent can we excess the real customers who control the real money based on the avatars they create?
Hemp P, 2004, Avatar-Based Marketing, viewed September 14, 2010
http://hbr.org/2006/06/avatar-based-marketing/ar/1
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