Internet Advertising, Game Theory and Consumer Welfare
Electronic Commerce Research - Special issue on agents in electronic commerce
Behavioral Model of Online Purchasers in E-Commerce Environment
Electronic Commerce Research
Why people buy virtual items in virtual worlds with real money
ACM SIGMIS Database
Factors influencing impulse buying during an online purchase
Electronic Commerce Research
Exploiting MMORPG log data toward efficient RMT player detection
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology
Game vendors' influence on the monetary value of virtual goods
Proceedings of the 2011 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
Teenagers in social virtual worlds: Continuous use and purchasing behavior in Habbo Hotel
Computers in Human Behavior
Exploring the value of purchasing online game items
Computers in Human Behavior
Proactive ambient social media for supporting human decision making
UIC'11 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Ubiquitous intelligence and computing
Purchase behavior in virtual worlds: An empirical investigation in Second Life
Information and Management
Virtual item purchasing patterns in a social game: differences between high and low spenders
Proceedings of the 2012 iConference
Howdy pardner!: on free-to-play, sociability and rhythm design in FrontierVille
Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments
Extended or exhausted: how console DLC keeps the player on the rail
Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research
Emergence of Gamified Commerce: Turning Virtual to Real
Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations
Forecasting online game addictiveness
Proceedings of the 11th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games
Information Systems Frontiers
Hi-index | 0.00 |
The global market for virtual items, characters and currencies was estimated to exceed 2.1 Billion USD in 2007. Selling virtual goods for real money is an increasingly common revenue model not only for online games and virtual worlds, but for social networking sites and other mainstream online services as well. What drives consumer spending on virtual items is an increasingly relevant question, but little research has been devoted to the topic so far. Previous literature suggests that demand for virtual items is based on the items' ability to confer gameplay advantages on one hand, and on the items' decorative value on the other hand. In this paper, I adopt a perspective from the sociology of consumption and analyse examples from 14 virtual asset platforms to suggest a more detailed set of item attributes that drive virtual item purchase decisions, consisting of functional, hedonic and social attributes.