 I’m hard at work here on another post on escapism. Relish the irony. Earlier this year, I attended Leveraging Online Media and Online Marketing, hosted by the Marketing Science Institute, the Jaffe Center for Persuasive Communication, and the eLab Sloan Center for Internet Retailing. We gathered at the UC Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center—a vaguely Frank Gehry-like structure griddling in the sun, surrounded by the Santa Rosa mountains. And it certainly proved to be no country for old people. The sociological and econometric working papers presented are gold mines, but only for those marketers willing to prospect in the craggy cliffs separating academia from the business world. (As most of you know, I was born with a rock pick.) Ann E. Schlosser’s paper, Will the Real Me Please Stand Up? An Exploration into Virtual vs. Physical Identity and Its Effect on Consumer Behavior investigated among other things the influence of virtual world avatars on real-world shopping. Subjects who had virtual product experience had higher intentions to purchase the product (online and/or offline) than those who simply read and viewed pictures of the product or those who watched a video of the product being used. Avatars, whether physically congruent with the real person or not (the research into avatar physical traits and corresponding interpersonal dynamics is just plain fascinating), have this effect on purchase intent because they provide escape from objective self-awareness. They reduce awareness of self-discrepancies (a marvelous notion). Avatars, in other words, deemphasize the real self in favor of the aspirational self marketers are always referencing. There are two lessons here. First, it seems to me that shopping online itself favors subjective self-awareness, or a self less split between the idealized and the actual. Shoppers can maintain trance-like states unfettered by sales associates, traffic jams or money itself (particularly true when credit cards are registered, thereby eliminating the reality check that should come with reaching for one’s plastic or cash.) The self we think (or our friends and significant others think) we ought to be, at least as it relates to our material possessions as a form of self-expression, has extraordinary license to thrive online. And I don’t believe marketers think about this enough. We should always be asking, “What are the proper fantasy supports for our fashionistas or homemakers or outdoor enthusiasts?” And at the motivational level, what are the best supports for our consumers’ celebrity aspirations, for their co-creation ambitions, etc.? (Do these ring an OPEN bell?) Second, marketers should be less literal-minded when it comes to avatars. Not all require a full-blown virtual world to inhabit (though this is the definition Gartner uses when predicting that by the end of 2011, 80% of active internet users will have an avatar.) Avatars on Yahoo Messenger show up simply when you’re IM’ing a friend, and change expressions as you change your emoticons. Personalizing consumers’ experiences of ecommerce and branding sites is, essentially, accommodating more fully their virtual selves, their thinner, richer, more book-reading and world-changing alter egos. My “avatar” when shopping for shoes online is a gal whose feet never touch the ground.
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Comment by Molly Metzger
At the risk of sounding like a fan girl, I love this post. It’s a bit of a prescription for an ailment we diagnose a lot in the lab — many online experiences, especially shopping, have a tendency to be, well, boring. Not much as changed over the past 5 years. We get more efficient but less engaging and consumer tastes are moving on. But avatars, a little 3D and “sufficient fantasy supports” ( I need to get a little more intel on that ;-)) might point the way for a new way to experience brands (and buy their stuff) on the OPEN web. I can hardly wait!
Comment by Alison McKee
Nita is brilliant — as usual and as I have always known her to be, virtually or otherwise.
Avatars aren’t literal equivalents of the consumer; they’re that Virtual Blend of Who I Am/Who I Want to Be, as is consumerism itself and as marketing and branding co’s try to understand but often miss — or understand too late.
(The technological cinematic equivalent to the avatar and the online shopping experience might be capture-motion graphics …. )
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