Kate Dai's Blog

Businesses explore options to save money and get marketing statistics and feedback from a large group of people when launching new products. Traditional methods such as surveys and test markets can be costly. Now, with the introduction of Second Life, they can get it all virtually”.

Many companies, such as Telus and Starwood Hotel, are picking up on how useful it is as a test market for products and to gain valueable feedback. The virtual world of real users enables them to bring forth more innovative products and designs that would be too costly and risky to test in real life.

Businesses have no limits to what they can create and test in the market. However, packaging, delivery, and other aspects are limited in the virtual world. For example, smaller packaging of food products (such as the smaller coke cans you can now buy)  for elderly people (or children) that cannot eat as much is very difficult to test in Second Life.

If Second Life continues to expand its reach to customers worldwide, its popularity amongst businesses will sky rocket as it becomes the world’s cheapest and safest test market for products.