eLab City aHead :) - the study of virtual consumption

eLab City will be a live-work-play community in Second Life for the study of virtual consumption. Development will begin by the end of 2007 (hopefully in November!), and the two-island sim should open in first quarter 2008.

A concept description and plan/map can be found at: http://elabcity.com . eLab City will serve as a platform for academic research on consumer behavior in virtual worlds conducted by UCR Sloan Center for Internet Retailing faculty and affiliates (see http://sloan.ucr.edu). eLab City will be developing a resident community, a Second Life panel, and mechanisms for collecting survey, observational, and experimental data.

The whole thing is a project of Tom Novak - Albert O. Steffey Professor of Marketing, Cooperating Faculty in Psychology, and Co-Director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing at the University of California, Riverside, where he joined the faculty in July 2006. Novak’s research since 1993 has focused exclusively on Internet and Web based commerce. His current research areas include virtual worlds, measuring the online consumer experience, online advertising, Web advertising metrics and modeling online advertising exposure, Internet marketing strategy, and electronic commerce policy.

We are proud to announce that aHead agency has been chosen to develop this one!

Cezary Fish