Consumers in Virtual Worlds

5/1/08

Carolyn Bonifield, Assistant Professor, and Amy Tomas, Lecturer, of the School of Business Administration, had a paper, "A Different Reality: Considering Possible Selves in Virtual Worlds," accepted for the 2008 Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference on Virtual Social Identity and Consumer Behavior.

The conference took place in Philadelphia in May, 2008. Drs. Bonifield and Tomas are currently working on a program of research focused on marketers' and consumers' behaviors in virtual worlds. These virtual worlds, among them the very popular Second Life, present a number of unique challenges and opportunities for promoting, selling and buying goods and services. The paper proposes an alternative version of the self-concept, referred to as the possible self, as a means to better understand the motivations behind consumers' willingness to spend significant sums of real currency on virtual goods and services. In addition to this paper, Drs. Bonifield and Tomas are working on several pieces of research related to marketing in the virtual world, including two independent study research projects with Business Administration seniors, Megan Piro and Jamie Webber.