Virtual Consumption, Sustainability & Human Well-Being

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting material states to shifting information states

Consuming Bits: An Exploratory Study of User Goals for Virtual Consumption

Virtual consumption, or consumption of virtual goods and property, has become a major economic activity in social virtual worlds such as Second Life. Given that virtual consumption has become an important part of everyday virtual life in social virtual worlds, understanding virtual consumption can be an essential aspect to understanding user behavior in those worlds. Despite its significance, little research has explicitly examined virtual consumption. Unsurprisingly, then, we know very little concerning the fundamental question of why users consume virtual property. The research study described in this paper is an initial examination of that question. For the study, we employed the laddering interview technique and means-end chain analysis, which produces users’ goal structure in reference to a hierarchical system of interrelated goals. 93 participants were interviewed in Second Life for the study. The results show that virtual consumption widely penetrates into virtual life and make virtual experience much richer

Users\u27 understandings of the virtual economy in social virtual worlds: consumption and entrepreneurship of virtual goods

Social virtual worlds (SVWs) such as Second Life have gained immense popularity during the last decade. Their popularity is reflected in the explosive growth of the in-world economy, which is mainly supported by users’ consumption of virtual goods and entrepreneurial behavior. Users’ economic behavior has increased the size of the virtual economy to reach over $1B in the United States in 2009 (Nicholson 2009). Given that virtual consumption and entrepreneurship have become an important part of everyday virtual life in SVWs, understanding these two types of economic activities is an essential aspect to understanding user behavior in SVWs. This research aims at investigating the meanings of virtual consumption and entrepreneurship for users. The research consists of two independent essays. In the first essay about virtual consumption, I examine users’ understandings of virtual consumption through core-periphery analysis of its social representation. 154 Second Life users participated in the web-based survey for this study. I also identify user goals for virtual consumption by using means-end chain analysis, based on interviews with 93 Second Life users. The second essay on the topic of virtual entrepreneurship examines the collective meanings of virtual entrepreneurship and their relationship with the collective meanings of SVWs. To understand the meanings of virtual entrepreneurship, the core-periphery structure of social representations of virtual entrepreneurship is analyzed, based on interviews with 24 Second Life entrepreneurs. The meanings of virtual entrepreneurship are explained and compared with the central meanings of SVWs, identified from 101 newspaper articles on SVWs from 2005 to 2009. The results show that virtual consumption penetrates extensively into the virtual life of users and make their virtual experience in SVWs much richer; that virtual entrepreneurship is institutionalized in SVWs, and the key meanings of SVWs are well translated into the meanings of virtual entrepreneurship. This research contributes in providing fundamental knowledge about virtual consumption and entrepreneurship and further suggests potential theoretical frameworks for future research. Implications for SVW service providers and producers and sellers of virtual goods are also identified. Another contribution of the research is to demonstrate alternative qualitative research approaches combined with quantitative analyses

An Analysis of Anger Responses within the Context of Virtualized Consumption of Hatsune Miku

Does anger reflect deep meaning of attachment and integration? In an effort to explicate the above notion and to capture the rapidly evolving consumer behaviour in the digital virtual terrain, the paper investigates the responses of fans to a break-out phenomenal from Japan, the virtual celebrity Hatsune Miku (HM) to a controversial report from CBS news (see Johnson, 2012). The meteoric rise to fame of HM, a Crypton Media-produced Vocaloid character which resembles a 16-year girl, is demonstrated by the sales of total HM brand goods reaching 10 billion yen (approximately $104 million USD), and by more than 350,000 vocaloid videos on YouTube and 92,600 such videos on Niconico douga - a Japanese YouTube-like site (Wikia, 2012; Santos 2011). On one side, the responses from fans to inaccurate claims by CBS news are replete with furious, cynical, and sarcastic comments that not only defend the credibility of HM, but also brutally criticize the validity of the proposed “fake-ness” of HM. Such comments even go beyond attacking the author of the article, and retaliate with attacks on America as a nation in response to a perceived attack on Japan within the article itself. On the other side, the responses unveil the deep adoration and love of fans to HM and the meaning, the aestheticism, and the values that HM gives to these fans and co-creators globally. With the ignited deep anger from HM fans due to the CBS report opening an unprecedented view of the “inner thoughts” of HM from “her” fans, this paper contributes to the domains of virtualized consumption and consumer emotion by exploring HM fans’ responses, extracting a number of key concepts and themes, and examining the link between them, including her real-ness and desired experiential rewards that the fans claim to truly enjoy

Exploring the Intersection of Digital Virtual Consumption and Family Rituals

Since Rook (1985) first described important linkages between rituals and consumer behavior, scholars have examined consumer rituals from the perspectives of the individual consumer, marketers, marketing exchanges, and cultural institutions. New modes of communication and expression (e.g., digital media), and globalization calls for a thorough understanding of the consumption-related ritual topics, and what areas they should explore in the future. In this paper, we systematically review articles in the top marketing and consumer behavior journals to provide an overview of the current composition of ritual scholarship, and of prospective areas for future research. In so doing, we hope to categorize ritual scholarship into broad conceptual domains and evaluate our current understanding of rituals in each, identify gaps in our understanding based on the changing market environment, and suggest areas of inquiry to address these gaps. We examined articles in the top twelve marketing journals identified in the SCImago Journal Rank of all marketing journals, each with an impact factor of at least 2.5. We searched for articles pertaining to consumption rituals in the twelve journals by consulting the three business databases included in the EBSCO database. Of these journals, five included pertinent articles: Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and the Journal of Retailing. We determined that the authors’ foci led to an emergent partition of the literature into five domains (albeit with a few overlaps). The research team engaged in close reads and iterative discussion of articles, identifying various themes and research extensions within each domain. The themes are: foundational, macro-level, meso-level, marketplace-level, and micro-level

Digital play and the actualisation of the consumer imagination

In this article, the authors consider emerging consumer practices in digital virtual spaces. Building on constructions of consumer behavior as both a sense-making activity and a resource for the construction of daydreams, as well as anthropological readings of performance, the authors speculate that many performances during digital play are products of consumer fantasy. The authors develop an interpretation of the relationship between the real and the virtual that is better equipped to understand the movement between consumer daydreams and those practices actualized in the material and now also in digital virtual reality. The authors argue that digital virtual performances present opportunities for liminoid transformations through inversions, speculations, and playfulness acted out in aesthetic dramas. To illustrate, the authors consider specific examples of the theatrical productions available to consumers in digital spaces, highlighting the consumer imagination that feeds them, the performances they produce, and the potential for transformation in consumer-players

Consumers\u27 Management of Risk in Daily Life through Digital Virtual Consumption

The term “risky consumption” elicits visions of extreme contexts, such as leaping from a moving airplane at 30,000 feet above ground or using illicit hallucinogenic drugs. However, this study aims to answer the call for understanding risk that is inherent in consumers’risk-laden life events. Specifically, we examine the process by which consumers use digital virtual consumption (DVC) to negotiate tensions related to risk and the implications that this process holds for consumers’ identity narratives. Findings demonstrate how consumers, upon a triggering risk-laden life event, can turn to DVC to both cope with risk, as well as to engage in pleasurable risk. The research extends the theoretical understandings of risk and identity as intertwined with DVC. Managerial and social welfare implications are also offered

Blurring the boundaries: Prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle

© The Author(s) 2015. This article explores the digital exchange and moral ordering of sustainable and ethical consumption in online Freecycle groups. Through interactive exchanges in digital (online posts) and material (consumer items) modes, Freecycling blurs three common binaries in analyses of consumption: (1) consumption/production, (2) digital/material and (3) mainstream/alternative. Drawing on Ritzer's notion of 'implosions' as well as practice theory, I show that Freecycling practices reimagine and reproduce both products and consumers, practising prosumption through mixed digital and material practices in a performative economy, and how mainstream and alternative ways of consuming are entangled in pursuit of more sustainable, ethical consumption. This challenges us to think beyond these traditional binaries and to conceptualise a more blurred, less analytically clean and more circular approach to studying consumption

Macroeconomic implications of virtual shopping : a theoretical approach

Recently, parallel to developments in the communication technology, online shopping has become increasingly popular for many products, like books, CDs, software, and computers. Most analysts conjecture that the future will witness a wider basket of products and a higher trade volume via the Internet. This paper investigates the economic implications of Internet shopping in a Ricardian equilibrium framework. First, it shows the necessary and sufficient condition for the shift to Internet shopping. Next, it indicates that macroeconomic variables like consumption and income rise when this shift takes place. Thus, this paper shows that the economic implications of Internet shopping will be higher than the current experience and Internet shopping will become an important element of the `new economy\' when the bulky part of the shopping is done via the Internet.