Avatar-Based Advertising in Second Life

Avatar-based, three-dimensional, virtual environments such as Second Life, the most popular and fastest growing environment, offer a promising corporate communication channel for brand marketing, advergaming, and interactive advertising. Drawing on presence literature, this study examines the effects of the presence (versus absence) of spokes-avatars that provide product information and consumers' multimodal interactions with these spokes-avatars on improvements in the consumers' product involvement, attitude toward the product, and enjoyment of the online shopping experience. In addition, this study investigates the effects of spokes-avatars' physical characteristics in terms of humanness (versus non-humanness) on consumers' evaluation of their physical attractiveness and the information value of the advertisement message. A path analysis reveals a mediating role of spokes-avatars' physical attractiveness.