Digital Virtual Consumption

Mike Molesworth (Editor), Janice Denegri-Knott (Editor)

Research output: Book/ReportBook

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Digital media present opportunities for new types of consumption including desiring, buying, collecting, making, and even selling digital virtual goods. To these activities we can add those taking place in virtual communities of consumption, online shops, brand websites, and online auction houses that together amount to a vast new landscape of consumption. Digital virtual consumption motivates concatenated practices which produce meaningful experience for their users as well as market opportunities to profit from them. Consumers create and maintain elaborate wish lists, engaging with simulations of brands on websites and in videogames, coveting items for use in online games and even spending ‘real’ money on these, undertaking entrepreneurial activity in virtual worlds, conjuring nostalgia via online auctions, engaging in playful consumption in other new retail formats, writing reviews of products as part of the consumption experience, engaging in online activist activities, and many other emerging behaviors.

Analyses of consumption in the digital virtual realm are however limited. This collection brings together experienced researchers from the fields of consumer research, digital games, and virtual worlds to provide conceptual and empirical work that helps us understand these new and significant consumer activities. Online communities negotiate the ‘correct’ use of goods and offer technical advice, consumers develop new products, individuals create and distribute their own promotional material for their favorite brands, and entrepreneurial consumers marketing and selling their own products online. Here we may see a blurring of consumption and production, or work and leisure activity that requires further thought about what makes it meaningful for individuals. The chapters in this volume take stock of the emergence and likely importance of digital virtual consumption for consumer culture, including a review of both new and existing conceptual and methodological tools as well as a resource of key examples and analyses of practices.

Original languageEnglish
PublisherRoutledge
Number of pages244
Edition1st
ISBN (Electronic)9780203114834
ISBN (Print)9780415529297, 9781138203075
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Jun 2012

Publication series

NameRoutledge Studies in Innovation, Organizations and Technology
PublisherRoutledge
Volume23

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2012 Taylor & Francis.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
  • General Business,Management and Accounting

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  • Introduction to digital virtual consumption

    Denegri-Knott, J. & Molesworth, M., 19 Jun 2012, Digital Virtual Consumption. Molesworth, M. & Denegri-Knott, J. (eds.). 1st ed. Routledge, 8 p. (Routledge Studies in Innovation, Organizations and Technology; vol. 23).

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

    4 Citations (Scopus)

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