Embracing falsity through the metaverse: The case of synthetic customer experiences

Abstract

The metaverse has been heralded as a next frontier for fueling strategic business opportunities. At the same time, recent months have witnessed explosive volatility in the market potential of proposed metaverse offerings. As a result, businesses are struggling to set a meaningful strategic course through an uncharted and rapidly changing landscape. We argue that the success of developing and scaling the metaverse as a vibrant new business ecosystem is largely dependent on the understanding that it is a unified and immersive reality where the physical and synthetic customer experiences seamlessly converge. For this to work, businesses and their customers need to be able to suspend their disbelief that synthetic elements are inherently false. We therefore consider the metaverse as a differentiated experience by exploring the promise and perils of falsity. We discuss how businesses can strategically embrace falsity by harnessing its intended—as well as mitigating its unintended—consequences, as they maneuver through major technological challenges in capturing customer value. We offer a diverse set of examples that illustrate how these strategies translate into managerial actions to competitively succeed in this new reality.