shopping for virtual products: does user gender matter?

Abstract

- Since the emergence of social virtual worlds (SVW) as a potential business platform, several authors and marketing managers are raising questions about avatars' shopping behavior. Millions of real dollars are being spent on virtual items in-worlds. Gender issues have received quite a lot of attention with regards to shopping behavior and shoppers adoption of specific retail channels. The current paper, however, is the first to empirically examine consumer behavior in SVWs, focusing in particular on the role of users' 'gender' in shaping their shopping behavior for virtual products.