E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions

E-commerce is a fundamental method of doing business, such that for a firm to say it is trading at all in the modern market-place it must have some element of on-line presence. Coupled with this is the explosion of the “population” of Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games and other shared...

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Main Authors: Scarle, S., Arnab, S., Dunwell, I., Petridis, P., Protopsaltis, A., de Freitas, Sara
Format: Journal Article
Published: Springer 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/28490
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author Scarle, S.
Arnab, S.
Dunwell, I.
Petridis, P.
Protopsaltis, A.
de Freitas, Sara
author_facet Scarle, S.
Arnab, S.
Dunwell, I.
Petridis, P.
Protopsaltis, A.
de Freitas, Sara
author_sort Scarle, S.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description E-commerce is a fundamental method of doing business, such that for a firm to say it is trading at all in the modern market-place it must have some element of on-line presence. Coupled with this is the explosion of the “population” of Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games and other shared virtual environments. Many suggest this will lead to a further dimension of commerce: virtual commerce. We discuss here the issues, current roadblocks and present state of an e-commerce transaction carried out completely within a virtual environment; a virtual transaction. Although technically such transactions are in a sense trivial, they raise many other issues in complex ways thus making V-transactions a highly interesting cross-disciplinary issue. We also discuss the social, ethical and regulatory implications for the virtual communities in these environments of such v-transactions, how their implementation affects the nature and management of a virtual environment, and how they represent a fundamental merging of the real and virtual worlds for the purpose of commerce. We highlight the minimal set of features a v-transaction capable virtual environment requires and suggest a model of how in the medium term they could be carried out via a methodology we call click-through, and that the developers of such environments will need to take on the multi-modal behavior of their users, as well as elements of the economic and political sciences in order to fully realize the commercial potential of the v-transaction.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-284902018-03-29T09:09:14Z E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions Scarle, S. Arnab, S. Dunwell, I. Petridis, P. Protopsaltis, A. de Freitas, Sara E-commerce is a fundamental method of doing business, such that for a firm to say it is trading at all in the modern market-place it must have some element of on-line presence. Coupled with this is the explosion of the “population” of Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games and other shared virtual environments. Many suggest this will lead to a further dimension of commerce: virtual commerce. We discuss here the issues, current roadblocks and present state of an e-commerce transaction carried out completely within a virtual environment; a virtual transaction. Although technically such transactions are in a sense trivial, they raise many other issues in complex ways thus making V-transactions a highly interesting cross-disciplinary issue. We also discuss the social, ethical and regulatory implications for the virtual communities in these environments of such v-transactions, how their implementation affects the nature and management of a virtual environment, and how they represent a fundamental merging of the real and virtual worlds for the purpose of commerce. We highlight the minimal set of features a v-transaction capable virtual environment requires and suggest a model of how in the medium term they could be carried out via a methodology we call click-through, and that the developers of such environments will need to take on the multi-modal behavior of their users, as well as elements of the economic and political sciences in order to fully realize the commercial potential of the v-transaction. 2012 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/28490 10.1007/s10660-012-9098-4 Springer restricted
spellingShingle Scarle, S.
Arnab, S.
Dunwell, I.
Petridis, P.
Protopsaltis, A.
de Freitas, Sara
E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions
title E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions
title_full E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions
title_fullStr E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions
title_full_unstemmed E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions
title_short E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions
title_sort e-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual transactions
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/28490