An Emerging Theory of Avatar Marketing

By Fred Miao, Irina V. Kozlenkova, Haizhong Wang, Tao Xie, Robert W. Palmatier. Journal of Marketing, 2021

542 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Avatars are becoming increasingly popular in contemporary marketing strategies, but their effectiveness for achieving performance outcomes (e.g., purchase likelihood) varies widely in practice. Related academic literature is fragmented, lacking both definitional consistency and conceptual clarity. This article makes three main contributions to avatar theory and managerial practice. First, to address ambiguity with respect to its definition, this study identifies and critically evaluates key conceptual elements of the term avatar, offers a definition derived from this analysis, and provides a typology of avatars’ design elements. Second, the proposed 2 × 2 avatar taxonomy suggests that the alignment of an avatar’s form realism and behavioral realism, across different contingencies, provides a parsimonious explanation for avatar effectiveness. Third, the authors develop an emerging theory of avatar marketing by triangulating insights from fundamental elements of avatars, a synthesis of extant research, and business practices. This framework integrates key theoretical insights, research propositions, and important managerial implications for this expanding area of marketing strategy. Lastly, the authors outline a research program to test the propositions and insights as well as advance future research.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, General Decision Sciences, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12ebc1ebbaf94cc814e5890a618f91572850c142

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Citations in the corpus

Shaping the Metaverse into Reality: A Holistic Multidisciplinary Understanding of Opportunities, Challenges, and Avenues for Future Investigation (2023, background): “Metaverse makes it possible for employees to create their own social avatars.(141) Organizations across the globe are gearing up to develop an overarching and comprehensive human resource management strategy that can be of help to set guidelines, while the transition happens to the virtual world of ”