SFU Business researchers’ investigation of Second Life wins international marketing award
Aug 03, 2010
An in-depth investigation of business and marketing practices on Second Life by researchers from Simon Fraser University has won a prestigious award from the Academy of Marketing.
SFU Business professors Leyland Pitt and Michael Parent and PhD students Anjali Bal (SFU Business) and Wade Halvorson (Lulea University of Technology, Sweden) have won the Pearson Education Prize for best case study paper at the July 2010 Academy of Marketing Conference in Coventry, England. The conference is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom.
Their study is entitled “Cashing in on the Green Dots: Marketing Ireland in Second Life”. The case concerns Virtual Dublin, a successful online business in the 3-D virtual world of Second Life.
Virtual Dublin was created by Irish developer John Mahon, whose e-marketing campaign was built around sponsoring a range of events and activities in a digital replica of the real-world Dublin. The business model took full advantage of Second Life’s immersive environment to offer real-world advertisers the opportunity to replicate and extend their advertising campaigns into the virtual world.
The SFU Business case study demonstrated the viability of a moderately profitable enterprise on Second Life – one that included Second Life advertising that, unlike traditional ads, was “imbued into the fabric of the experience… residents had an ambient awareness of them.”
The business idea, say the researchers, “combined the virtual and the real-world models, but not by selling the same good or service in real and virtual worlds, but by bringing real-world advertisers into the virtual world.”
Business cases are often used as part of the case teaching method, an experiential learning approach that is popular with some business schools, and one made well known by Harvard Business School. “Cashing in on the Green Dots: Marketing Ireland in Second Life” is already being taught to business students on two continents.
The 2010 Pearson Education Prize marks the third year in succession that the best case study honour has gone to Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Business Administration.