Proposal For Submission

Research Topic:

Our research topic is about Avatar Marketing. Today, people can now have easy access to the World Wide Web or the Internet where users can connect with each other through social network or even through online games. We’re living in a social media world, where our avatar is often the first impression others get about us as we interact virtually on social networks, blogs, microblogs and other online communities. Our avatars are representation of ourselves as it represents us in the virtual world.

Regardless of the different types of avatars that can be created in the virtual world, most of these avatars have accessories or virtual items which people would pay real cash for. For a start, Second Life which is a free 3D virtual world where users can socialize, its virtual economy is bringing in nearly $500 million a year in virtual sales alone; the virtual economy may even be doing better than the real economy. It can also be seen in social network such as Facebook, where there are applications for games such as FarmsVille which users can purchase these virtual items to place it on their virtual farm. Thus, we are engrossed in how the avatar is marketed to the online users in the virtual world as well as what are the concern in using these avatars in the online communities.

As the Internet users are growing and are still growing. It can be seen that the Internet users now represents almost 30% of the world’s population which is a staggering amount of 2 billion people around the world. Therefore, we want to analyze on the uses of avatar and how these avatar is marketed to them in the virtual world as well as the current issues which avatar users face during their time in the virtual world through this research.


Research Objectives:

1. To analyze the current usage of avatar in the virtual world and online communities
2. To have a clearer view on the uses of avatar that can relate to our lives
3. To find out how these avatars are marketed to the online users in the virtual world
4. To understand why people still pay real cash for these virtual items
5. To identify what are the possible issues that avatar users face when using their avatars


Report Outline:

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of avatars in the virtual world
1.2 How avatars relates in our daily lives
2.0 Application of avatars in the virtual world
2.1 Online games
2.2 Social communities
3.0 How avatars are marketed to the online users
3.1 Strategies on how the avatars is marketed
3.2 Reasons why these people shop for virtual items
4.0 Issues for using avatars in the virtual world
4.1 Privacy Issues
4.2 Discrimination Issues
4.3 Commercialization of avatars Issues
5.0 Conclusion
6.0 Recommendation
7.0 References


Literature Review:

Avatar is a being you’ve created as a representation of yourself in this online environment (Hemp, P 2004). 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. According to Hemp (2004), there are 2 types of avatars based games: one is combat focused games such as EverQuest, Lineage, and World of Warcraft. Others would be social interaction provision games such as Second life and Entropia Universe which aimed at adults and Sims online and Habbo Hotel: teenager oriented

It can be seen that avatars have the attraction of that proposition which made avatar fashion and possessions, from the things you'd buy or want in the real world as these avatars are used by online users which is the millions of people who play games on Facebook or dabble in virtual worlds such as Second Life (O’Donnell 2009). Accoding to O’Donnell (2009), the growth is being driven largely by the increasing popularity of online social gaming. As a result, virtual worlds and game companies typically let users join and/or play for free, and charge them when they want to upgrade their avatar and its accessories or enhance their gaming experience. Also, virtual goods also are exchanged online by members of social-networking sites, especially Facebook.

In addition, virtual online worlds have the possibilities to overcome traditional marketing through e-commerce as the virtual settings can give marketers to design and implement complex avatars as recommendation agents (Jin & Bolebruch 2009). Besides that, in the virtual world, these marketers tend to provide a more realistic and modernized avatars such as Second Life to the online users in order to attract them to purchase these virtual goods using real cash. Also, companies are increasingly considering virtual worlds as a new frontier for doing online business with current or new customers. According to Arakji & Lang (2008), people may adopt these social interaction games to satisfy various needs and desires. Some are even interested in the fantasy aspect of the games, as they can escape from the real life pressure to the virtual worlds (Arakji & Lang 2008). For this reason, more and more people are becoming engross into these virtual world where people would start to customize their avatars in order fulfill their needs as they are not able to do in the real life. Thus, people often buy virtual products that are similar to what they own, or yearn to own which can be found in the real world, and often a whole lot more (O’Donnell 2009).
It can also be seen that these avatars can take position of a trust intermediary in electronic commerce. According to Bauer & Neumann (2005), these avatars can positively influence the trust of a consumer towards the supplier in the virtual environment. Hence, the use of avatars enhances the trust among the people itself in the Internet. Also, it can be seen that more and more online users are beginning to do online trading in the virtual world where they can trade virtual goods in online games or social interactive games.

Also, with the emergence of virtual worlds as a common part of society among the online communities, many people have turned to their avatars as their identical personality (Chang 2009). According to Chang (2009), the avatar can be seen as the personality itself of the user behind it. However, even if they are in the virtual world, the avatars are not as innocent as they appear. For an example, intrusions on privacy would be a problem as the avatars are market to the people in the virtual realm where people would sometimes give up their identity such as age, address, name and more to online stalkers. In addition, conversation in the virtual world would be as real in the real world. Thus, users tend to say things in private that people don't get to hear. But, others would not know of the virtual world developers that could 'hear' the conversation between two users, using their avatars. According to Hemp (2004), there is also consumers’ privacy concern about the detailed tracking of avatar data. As a result, these issues are still on-going and have not been fully resolve.


References:

Major references:

Arakji, R.Y, Lang, K.R 2008, ‘Avatar Business Value Analysis: A method for evaluation of business value creation in virtual commerce’ Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, vol. 9, no.3, viewed on 9th September 2010
This journal articles talks about the valuation of businesses inside the virtual world where the avatar business is evaluated to gain information for the cost-benefit analysis to estimate the value of virtual commerce venture. We decided to use this article because it gives us the information for the cause of why more and more businesses are now venturing into the virtual environment to market to these avatars.

Bauer, H.H, Neumann, M.M 2005, ‘Investigating the effects of avatars as virtual representatives in electric commerce’ Conference: Electronic Marketing, viewed on the 10th October 2010
This research article explores on the details of appearance of avatars in the virtual environment which can relate to the increase their trust in e-commerce. We decided to use this article because of the appearance of avatars which can be relate to the virtual world in most online games or social interactive game such as Second Life where whether they would trust a human-like characters (Avatars) for e-commerce or virtual commerce.

Hemp, P 2004, Harvard Business Review: ‘Avatar-Based Marketing’, viewed on 14th September 2010, http://tekinico.free.fr/sharing/2006RdersGuide/pdfs/R0606Bp2.pdf
This journal article talks about the marketing in real world compare to the marketing in virtual world as well as marketing to avatars. It gives an in-depth review of the marketing in virtual worlds through advertising and branding for virtual commerce. We decide to use this article as it provides indications on whether the online communities are affected by the new marketing through virtual worlds.

Jin, S-A & Bolebruch, J 2009, ‘Avatar-Based Advertising in Second Life: The role of presence and attractiveness of virtual spokespersons’ Journal of Interactive Advertising, vol. 10, no.1 (Fall 2009), pp.51-60, viewed 10th September 2010
This research article talks about the study that examines the effects of spokes-avatar that provide product information to consumers for online-shopping experience. Also, it investigates the effect of spokes-avatar’ physical characteristics on consumer’s evaluation of their physical attractiveness. We decided to use these articles because it gives us the insight of how the physical characteristic of a speaking avatar affect the behavior of others in purchasing products especially during online.

O’Donnell, J 2009, ‘Unlike reality, virtual retail sales are hot, especially for avatars’ USA Today, viewed on 10th October 2010, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2009-12-23-virtual-retail-sales-avatar_N.htm
This article is about the virtual retail which focuses on virtual commerce where online users now purchase these virtual goods online that are increasing popular in online games as well as social interactive games. It shows how virtual shopping has growing into a multi-million dollar enterprise. We decided to use this article because it provides us information about the reasons for the increasing popularity in using virtual commerce especially avatars.

Chang, A 2009, Squidoo: Virtual Worlds Avatar, viewed on 15 September 2010, http://www.squidoo.com/virtual-world-avatars#module30554242
This article is about the uses of avatars in the virtual world, as well as the origins of virtual world avatars. It also talks about the freeware business model for virtual worlds where online users can come and interact with each other using their avatars for free. We decided to choose this article because it provides the information about the usage of avatars. Also, it gives us indications about the issues on avatars especially in the virtual worlds where many issues and challenges are still affecting the online communities.

Other references:

Bartle, R.A, 2009, Security and Privacy and Virtual Worlds, http://www.nis-summer-school.eu/nis09/presentations/02_barlte.pdf, viewed on 15 September 2010

Damer B, 1997, Applications of Virtual Worlds, viewed on 14 September 2010.
http://www.digitalspace.com/avatars/book/chus/chus1.htm

Enright, A 2007, ‘How the Seconds Half Lives: Marketers are setting up brands in Second Life. Now what?’ Marketing News, viewed on 7th October 2010, https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.5&thid=12bc928aebf934ba&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3Dc8d66efc2a%26view%3Datt%26th%3D12bc928aebf934ba%26attid%3D0.5%26disp%3Dattd%26zw&sig=AHIEtbQHEhbFmtP22gzvbmn-5S3OlzLuZg

Grosol, J.M 2009, ‘The Proteus Effect: How our avatar changes online behavior’ Psych Central, viewed on 2nd October 2010, http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/11/24/the-proteus-effect-how-our-avatar-changes-online-behavior/

Holzwarth, M, Janiszewski, C, & Neumann, M.M 2006, ‘The influence of avatar on online consumer shopping behavior’ Journal of Marketing, vol.70, p.p 19-36, viewed on 5th October 2010

Science Daily, 2010, What Does Your Avatar Say about You, viewed 15 September, 2010
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100726094905.htm