Virtual Identities from Virtual Environments

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Author(s): Melvin Prince (Southern Connecticut State University, USA)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 10
Source title: Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Advertising: User Generated Content Consumption
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Matthew S. Eastin (University of Texas at Austin, USA), Terry Daugherty (The University of Akron, USA)and Neal M. Burns (University of Texas, Austin, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-792-8.ch018

Keywords: Accounting and Finance / Business & Management / Business Science Reference / Marketing

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Abstract

The creation of identities in immersive online digital environments has become commonplace in consumer behavior. Consumers frequently enter into socially networked, computer mediated environments (CME’s) as avatars. A user can design his or her avatar by choosing typologies of facial features, body types and clothing styles. The chapter concerns Avatar analysis as a system for generating and analyzing consumer information of practical value to marketers. Avatar analysis enhances understanding of brand perceptions and meanings, discovers new ways of positioning and differentiating brands, and provides insights for improving the effectiveness of brand communications. Using websites such as Second Life to draw avatars, consumer identity projections are elicited based on consumers’ perceptions and interpretations of their own digital figure drawings i.e., virtual social identities of consumers and brands. These identity projections disclose their real and ideal selves, brand-as-a-person, and imagery of a typical brand user.

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Virtual Identities from Virtual Environments

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