Virtual Social Identity and Consumer Behaviour

Contents: Introduction. I. The virtual experience: 1. Avatar: Auto-ethnographic research in virtual worlds/Robert V. Kozinets and Richard Kedzior. 2. For a better exploration of metaverses as consumer experiences/Leila El Kamel. II. Consumer behavior in virtual worlds: 3. Interaction seeking in second life and implications for consumer behavior/Christian Hinsch and Peter H. Bloch. 4. I dont know you, but I trust you: a comparative study of consumer perceptions in real life and virtual worlds/James E. Brown and Tracy L. Tuten. 5. Social interaction with virtual beings: the technology relationship interaction model and its agenda for research/Kathy Keeling, Debbie Keeling, Antonella de Angeli and Peter McGoldrick. 6. Personalized avatar: a new way to improve communication and e-service/David Crete, Anik St-Onge, Aurelie Merle, Nicolas Arsenault and Jacques Nantel. 7. The sacred and the profane in online gaming: a netnographic inquiry of Chinese games/Jeff Wang, Xin Zhao and Gary J. Bamossy. III. Avatar creation and appearance: 8. Finding Mii: virtual social identity and the young consumer/J. Alison Bryant and Anna Akerman. 9. Me, myself and my avatar: the effects of avatars on SNW social networking users attitudes toward a website and its ad content/Youjeong Kim and S. Shyam Sundar. IV. Person perceptions in virtual worlds: 10. Effects of ethnic identity and ethnic ambiguous agents on consumer response to websites/Osei Appiah and troy Elias. 11. Ethnic matching: an examination of ethnic morphing in advertising/Yuliya Lutchyn, Brittany R.L. Duff, Ronald J. Faber, Soyoen Cho and Jisu Huh. 12. Mirror, Mirror on the web: understanding thin-slice judgements of avatars/Melissa G. Bublitz, craig C. Claybaugh and Laura A. Peracchio. Name Index. Subject Index.
 
The creation and expression of identity or of multiple identities in immersive environments is rapidly transforming consumer behavior. The largest social networking site, second life, and the gaming oriented site, World Warcraft, have tens of millions of registered users. Increasingly, RL (real life) companies including GM, Dell, Sony, IBM wells Fargo are staking their claim to computer mediated environments (CMEs) such as second life. There com and Entropia Universe. Corporate America\'s transition to the virtual world is an attempt to reach and entice the growing flood of consumers occupying these virtual worlds.

Despite this huge potential, experts know very little about the best way to talk to consumers in these online environments. How will established research findings from the offline world transfer to CMEs? That\'s where Virtual Social Identity and Consumer Behaviour comes in. With cutting edge research on the scope and impact of CMEs-where they are, and where they are going. There is no better source for understanding the impact of virtual social identities on consumers, consumer behaviour and electronics commerce. (jacket)