CFR Research Seminar with Stephanie Noble (University of Tennessee)
The Center for Retailing at the Stockholm School of Economics is pleased to invite interested academics and practitioners to a Research Seminar on:
"My Avatar is Me: Digital Avatar Ownership and Information Disclosure in Virtual Retail Environments"
This seminar is part of the Center for Retailing's Visiting Researcher Program, generously funded by the Hakon Swenson Stiftelsen.
Registration
Please register for the seminar here (In person or via Zoom)
General questions
E-mail: wiley.wakeman@hhs.se
About the seminar
As consumers begin to embrace virtual and augmented reality in their everyday lives, retailers are engaging with the development of virtual storefronts in the metaverse. Virtual retailing is expected to become more commonplace, and as retailers start offering this online experience, consumers will have the opportunity to create and adopt digital avatars (i.e. digital representations of the user) to navigate these virtual environments. Avatars are typically fully customizable, where users have options to create an avatar that is similar (i.e. avatars that resemble the user with similar gender, hair color, body type, etc.) or dissimilar (i.e. avatars that do not resemble the user with dissimilar gender, hair color, body type, etc.) to themselves. As this increase in digitization of the consumer journey expands, research is needed to explore how consumers might behave when navigating shopping via an avatar. Accordingly, we explore a relationship between avatar similarity (versus dissimilarity) and information disclosure, driven by consumer feelings of psychological ownership. Our findings expand developing research surrounding retailing in the metaverse and clarification on consumer privacy concerns with the increase in digitization of retail shopping experiences.
About the speaker
Stephanie Noble is the Proffitt’s Professor of Marketing and William B. Stokely Faculty Research Fellow in the Marketing Department at the University of Tennessee. Her primary research interests involve customer experience management in retail and service settings. She has published in several top journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review and many other outlets. Stephanie is the incoming Co-Editor of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and on the editorial board for Journal of Retailing, and is past Co-Editor for the Journal of Service Research.
Previous visitors
Kate White (University of British Columbia)
Stefano Puntoni (The University of Pennsylvania)
Joyce Liu (City, University of London)
Hannes Datta (University of Tilburg)
Remi Trudel (Boston University)