Hosting Business Meetings and Special Events in Virtual Worlds: A Fad or the Future?

Value-creation space: The role of events in a service-dominant marketing paradigm

“…While there is increasing interest in and application of online or virtual events (Pearlman and Gates, 2010), such a discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. The promise of proximity and interaction represents one of the key strengths of events as a value creation space, as echoed by interviewee A:…”

Team Collaboration in Virtual Worlds: Editorial to the Special Issue

“…Teleconferencing and videoconferencing require special hardware (e.g., cameras, conference phones, cables) and have relatively expensive service costs (e.g., long distance fees, service fees for connecting callers). Teleconferencing also requires more bandwidth than VW transmissions (Pearlman & Gates, 2010).…”

“…Flow occurs when one reaches a state of enjoyment, satisfaction, and control resulting from being fully engaged in an activity (Hossain & Wigand, 2004). In VWs, flow typically occurs due to users' perception of co-existing in a realistic space where one can seemingly interact with others and the environment (Kahai et al, 2007;Kharif, 2007;Owens et al, 2011;Pearlman & Gates, 2010). Specifically, being able to communicate (verbally and via text chat), exhibit emotions and body language, and express oneself via object creation, manipulation, and sharing makes for rich interactions that facilitate flow (Kahai et al, 2007;Pearlman & Gates, 2010).…”

Time for a Post-Mortem?: Business Professionals’ Perspectives on the Disillusionment of Virtual Worlds

“…VWs were also seen as a tool that would revolutionize collaboration, as communication was supported by feedback, multiplicity of cues and channels, language variety, and channel expansion (Davis, Murphy, Owens, Khazanchi, & Zigurs, 2009). The increased social presence and tools supporting user engagement were said to be useful for holding business meetings that could span the globe (Pealman & Gates, 2010), training initiatives (Messinger, Ge, Mayhew, Niu, & Stroulia, 2010;Piccoli, Ahmad, & Ives, 2001), global collaboration (Aurish, et al, 2009) and virtual tours (Papp, 2010) -all of which would save organizations travel time and costs (Nevo, Nevo, & Carmel, 2011). Despite the affordances, VWs are empowered and reliant on their users, and it is only through organization adoptions that these affordances can translate into real organizational benefits (Hua & Haughton, 2009).…”