Virtual Item Sales as a Revenue Model: Identifying Attributes that Drive Purchase Decisions

Electronic Commerce Research, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 97-113, 2009

17 Pages Posted: 2 Mar 2009 Last revised: 25 Jun 2010

See all articles by Vili Lehdonvirta

Vili Lehdonvirta

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute

Date Written: 2009

Abstract

The global market for virtual items, characters and currencies was estimated to exceed 2.1 Billion USD in 2007. Selling virtual goods for real money is an increasingly common revenue model not only for online games and virtual worlds, but for social networking sites and other mainstream online services as well. What drives consumer spending on virtual items is an increasingly relevant question, but little research has been devoted to the topic so far. Previous literature suggests that demand for virtual items is based on the items' ability to confer gameplay advantages on one hand, and on the items' decorative value on the other hand. In this paper, I adopt a perspective from the sociology of consumption and analyse examples from 14 virtual asset platforms to suggest a more detailed set of item attributes that drive virtual item purchase decisions, consisting of functional, hedonic and social attributes.

Keywords: consumer behavior, online communities, business model, purchase drivers, virtual consumption, RMT

Suggested Citation

Lehdonvirta, Vili, Virtual Item Sales as a Revenue Model: Identifying Attributes that Drive Purchase Decisions (2009). Electronic Commerce Research, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 97-113, 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1351769

Vili Lehdonvirta (Contact Author)

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute ( email )

1 St. Giles
University of Oxford
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3JS
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk

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