Why do people buy virtual goods?
Virtual Economy Research Network: “That question has been a driving force in much of my PhD research, which is finally beginning to reach its conclusion. During this year, I will hopefully have four journal articles published or accepted for publication. I will blog about them here as they come out. Academic publishing can be slow, so some of the stuff that comes out now will have been written two years ago. Fortunately I think all of it is still relevant. The first article I thought I would blog about is titled Virtual item sales as a revenue model: identifying attributes that drive purchase decisions. It’s due to appear in Electronic Commerce Research 9(1-2). A pre-print version (essentially the same content with a less pleasant layout) of the paper can be downloaded here. The paper addresses the question of why people buy virtual goods by focusing on what features and attributes of virtual items users are attracted to.
