Second Life :

« Who hasn’t ever dreamt of having a second life? Meanwhile this dream became (virtual) reality in ‘Second Life’. In public as well as in many populist discussions, magazines and blogs ‘Second Life’ is often called a game. It is true that it could also be a global game for the players, named residents, in this virtual world. But ‘Second Life’ is much more. Within the last years since its foundation in 2003 on June, 23rd it grew up spirally, consequential and more and more exponential to a seriously taken business with USD 2.6 million trading volume at round about 10.7 million transactions in November 2006. The trading volume in the reference period one year ago was only USD 0.3 million.

Today a wide variety of companies of all industries like Adidas, Amazon, American Apparel, BMW, EnBW, Mercedes-Benz, Sony BMG, Toyota and Vodafone have built up virtual branches, agencies and stores in ‘Second Life’. Also newswires, radio stations and publishing companies such as Reuters, BBC and Axel Springer Verlag are participating actively in this virtual world. The German boulevard magazine ‘Bild’, for instance, published the first edition of the online magazine ‘The Avastar’ on December 21st, 2006 [4]. Finally, individuals started their own virtual trade-off, rent and lease businesses or doing trading with acquired real estates and islands.

So, the question could be, why it is interesting for mankind to participate in a virtual world. On the one hand it is the possibility to exchange the real, over-directed life with a new one which can be created by the individual himself. In this context this virtual world can offer a diversity of things which are impossible to buy, to have or to do in the real life for most people, like buying an expensive sports car at a fraction of the real costs, having an island for oneself or to hold down an exciting job as a disk jockey, model or fashion designer. On the other hand the interpersonal social behavior has developed from door-to-door and place-to-place up to person-to-person relationships – a social network of individuals.

But ‘Second Life’ is, of course, no closed economical and financial circuit. On the one hand real money must be exchanged into ‘Linden Dollars’ – the virtual currency, traded at the virtual user-to-user commerce market, the ‘LindeX Currency Exchange’, and vice versa. Otherwise, real companies are selling (virtual) products and services in ‘Second Life’, providing services for the online communities and people are working as employees for virtual enterprises. An example is the IBM Corporation, which “[…] is ramping up its push into virtual worlds with an investment of roughly $ 10 million over the next 12 months […]”. The EMDS AG, Stuttgart, Germany built up a new virtual convention center and a virtual booth for the CeBIT trade fair in 2007. Furthermore, Sun Microsystems, Inc. expressed the significance of ‘Second Life’ in a press release in October 2006: “Sun Microsystems will launch its presence in the virtual world Second Life next week, holding the first 'in-world' press conference by a Fortune 500 company at the opening of the company's new virtual Sun Pavilion.”.

The most interesting on-going and upcoming things are the convergence and conflation of real world and virtual businesses on the one hand and the harmonization of principles and standards on the other hand. However, this will have a major impact on economical and social behavior, even on corporate identities and cultures. But this will be likewise a chance and a challenge for almost all of today’s and future enterprises. For the individuals, however, this brings along a number of opportunities and shows that the residents will remain the most important factor in ‘Second Life’ .

 VIRTUAL ELECTRONIC BUSINESS

According to the definition of electronic business of Wirtz, virtual electronic business is the initiation and the partial respectively complete support, development and maintenance of performance exchange processes by using electronic networks and internet based electronic intermediaries within the internet economy, see also . An intermediary such as ‘Second Life’ also promotes the disintermediation – the elimination of interstages like wholesale traders and retailers within the distribution chain.

Furthermore, in this context the intermediaries could also act as ‘information intermediaries’ or ‘infomediaries’ under the precondition that they are able to support the information exchange process between transaction partners.

If an enterprise intends to do virtual electronic business in ‘Second Life’ this can be done in three ways:

1. Doing any kind of advertising for real world products and services within ‘Second Life’ that the individuals behind the residents will buy the products and services in the real world like shoes, cars and mobile phone contracts. This is the common goal of probably all enterprises which are located in ‘Second Life’.

2. Trading with real world products and services by using ‘Second Life’ as an intermediary while promoting products and services – equivalent to point 1 – in ‘Second Life’ and linking to an online shop outside ‘Second Life’ where the products can be bought or to a website where the individual behind the resident can offer services or get in contact with a consultant or sales representative.

3. Trading with virtual products and services within ‘Second Life’. In this case ‘Second Life’ is much more than just an intermediary as the whole process exchange transaction is done completely in this virtual world by using the ‘Second Life’ currency – ‘Linden Dollars’. In this case the only restrictions are the daily and monthly billing and trading limits, depending on the personal account.

In the first case only the initiation phase of a virtual electronic business transaction is concerned whereas in the following two cases the whole performance exchange process takes effect. The advantage for well-known companies like Adidas, BMW or Vodafone is their publicity and reputation they firstly bring in into ‘Second Life’. In this virtual world, however, they have the possibility even to increase their reputation via the so called ‘Electronic Branding’ which will then have a positive effect onto real world business.>>

Exemple of e business advertising for second life :