Virtual online worlds - Enabling technologies to establish interwoven relationships to network constituents in an emerging virtual marketspace

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous grade: 1st University of Lincoln (Faculty of Business & Law) course: International Marketing Strategy language: English abstract: PurposeThis dissertation analyses whether Second Life as an emerging interactiveonline environment provides marketers with the scope to establishinterwoven relationships to network constituents and highlights theimportance and benefits arising from enabling technologies to businessmarketing operations.Design / Methodology / ApproachThe correlation to previous work was critically addressed with a focal pointset on relationship and e-marketing approaches and strategies whilsthighlighting the potential of an utilisation of virtual worlds / communities.The methodological approach was of an inductive philosophy bygathering information about Second Life from a corporate and anindividual point of view. This took the form of a self-administered Internetmediated questionnaire a semi-structured telephone interview and aparticipant observation.FindingsThrough a conceptual analysis of the virtual community of Second Life interms of exploring reasons for participation and benefits received from animmersion into Second Life the research study indicated that corporateinvolvement in this innovative environment can offer marketers withopportunities to establish relationships to existing and potential networkconstituents.Research Limitations / ImplicationsThis marketing research study identified limitations due to its topical natureas the number of research publications is limited with regards to themomentum of Second Life's innovative virtual 3-D environment and henceresearch in this arena is only just emerging and has not been empiricallytested. The evolving virtual world environment along with the possiblenecessity for marketers to both establish a presence and demonstrateinnovative marketing ap