Agent-Based Virtual Environments for Marketing: Processes in Commercial Sector

Virtual Environments (VEs) are currently being used in an increasingly wide range of areas such as simulations (Snowdon, Churchill, & Munro, 2001), games (Torres, 2008), business (Lanier & Biocca, 1992) and decision making (Lurie & Mason, 2007). One of the most popular commercialized shared virtual environment systems is SecondLife (Linden Lab, 2003). SecondLife is an Internet-based virtual world video game, which was launched on June 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc. Although SecondLife is sometimes referred to as a game, this description does not fit the standard definition. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, and end-strategy, or most of other characteristics of games. However, there are a variety of systems, which have been created within the Second Life environment. John Gage, vice president and chief researcher at Sun Microsystems, has proposed the concept that make it possible for people to build virtual products and sell them inside SecondLife (Lee, 2007). Many users have already begun to build clothes, houses and entire islands that other users can buy with Linden dollars, which can be converted from U.S. dollars. (Figure 1) shows a shopping scenario in SecondLife. During this virtual shopping process, sellers and consumers could see each other’s avatars’ AbsTRACT