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Developing a Methodology to Research the Avatar/ User Relationship

Ward, Janet and Coates, N (2016) Developing a Methodology to Research the Avatar/ User Relationship. In: 2016 Winter Marketing Academic Conference, 28-26 Feb 2016, Caesars Palace Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV. (Unpublished)

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Virtual worlds such as Second Life have created a new place to enact the social in which the user creates an avatar to explore, interact and consume. Consumer behavior researchers have largely overlooked avatars and the challenges they present to extant theories. There have been calls for research into the avatar-user relationship (Messinger et al, 2008) and indeed Belk (2013 p 44) suggests that what both our avatars and we do online influences the self and therefore “only studying extended self offline is missing a large part of the influences on our contemporary self concepts and our and others’ activities in creating them”. This leads us to the research question: How can the offline and online self be researched to understand the avatar-user relationship? This
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paper addresses this contemporary research problem.

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More Information

Depositing User: Barry Hall

Identifiers

Item ID: 6262
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/6262
Official URL: https://www.ama.org/events-training/Conferences/Pa...

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Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 26 Apr 2016 08:10
Last Modified: 02 Jul 2019 09:19

Contributors

Author: Janet Ward
Author: N Coates

University Divisions

Faculty of Business, Law and Tourism > Sunderland Business School
Faculty of Business, Law and Tourism > Sunderland Law School
Faculty of Business, Law and Tourism

Subjects

Business and Management > Marketing

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