Marketing of Virtual Collectibles: Value Creation in Virtual Worlds

With the rise of online multiplayer games and worlds, collecting virtual goods has become an increasing social activity and therefore established the virtual good?s subset of virtual collectibles as a relevant category. The corresponding emergence of virtual markets leads to increasing economic and social relevance for virtual collectibles. This is not only true for the obvious markets in virtual worlds where operators try to maximize the economic impact for them and develop sustainable business models. It is also true for many activities in real and virtual worlds where virtual collectibles provide value to people and enhance their overall experience with and within the worlds. Understanding the specifics of virtual collectibles when it comes to marketing them, their value creation chain and the interaction with real and virtual worlds is a major challenge in a vastly unresearched business environment. A major aspect in identifying this is to understand the drivers behind collecting behavior, how they translate to the non-materiality of virtual goods, what can be done to overcome corresponding obstacles and use opportunities and what are the prerequisites and frameworks so that it is accomplished successfully. All this will lead to a dualism in attributes for virtual and real in many goods which increases the potential for virtual or partly virtual collectibles in many ways.