Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption

TLDR

Online virtual worlds, video games, and interactive retail functions are popular, yet conceptual tools to understand consumer practices in these spaces are lacking. This paper proposes a taxonomy to capture emerging consumer behavior in digital virtual environments, linking virtual and material consumption. The taxonomy serves as a fluid template that maps the movement from imagined ideals to material and digital virtual actualizations, illustrated by examples of everyday and fantastical commodity practices. The authors argue that these practices can generate new consumer subjectivities and markets, with implications for consumer cultures that may be both liberatory and critical, and they outline avenues for future research. Keywords: digital virtual consumption, liminal space, imagination, fantasy, desire, Internet, video games.

Abstract

Abstract Despite the popularity of online spaces that simulate aspects of consumption‐like experiences (online virtual worlds, video games and interactive functions on online retailers) conceptual tools that aim to comprehend such consumer practices are yet to emerge. In an effort to better understand them this paper puts forward a taxonomy that may help us capture emerging consumer behavior in the digital virtual terrain in relation to virtual and material consumption. This may be read as a fluid template that considers the movement between what resides in consumer imaginations as ideal or virtual, its actualization in material and now also digital virtual spaces. We then offer examples of the practices that are emerging, specifically the increase in imaginative resources that interactive media provide; practices that actualize probable, everyday commodities and experiences in the digital virtual and practices that actualize fantastic commodities and experiences in the digital virtual. Finally, we discuss the potential for these to produce new consumer subjectivities and new markets, and as a result we conclude with a discussion of the implications of such developments for consumer cultures, noting the potential for both liberatory/celebratory and critical discourse as well as avenues for future research. Keywords: digital virtual consumptionliminal spacesimaginationfantasydesireInternetvideo games