![]() ![]() Social media influencers have become an integral part of most brands’ interactive marketing strategy for the past 15 years. The findings suggest brand design the branded virtual environment to facilitate consumer learning and virtual ownership, and align virtual merchandise and store ambiance with the real world to unify the brand image in both worlds. ![]() As one of the first empirical studies on metaverse brand experience, this study contributed by incorporating multidimensional and interrelated experiential value and examining the mediating role of brand image and virtual purchase. Hedonic value had no direct effect on consumer responses, but on symbolic and utilitarian value which in turn influences CBE and virtual purchase respectively. Results revealed that all three dimensions of value indirectly affect consumer-brand engagement (CBE) through brand image and virtual purchase intention. The covariance-based SEM analysis was conducted based on data from 702 Thai users of Asia's largest metaverse platform. This study proposes a model to investigate the influence of metaverse experiential value on consumer's brand perception and behavioral responses in the virtual and real world. The metaverse connects the physical and digital worlds to improve the consumer experience, but little is known about how consumers respond to branded virtual worlds in real life. Findings signal the importance of theoretically engaging avatars as assemblages both (a) influenced by player-avatar sociality and (b) that contribute (in part and whole) to antecedents, processes, and effects of gameplay. Results indicate component clusters that are universal to PARs (demographics and body features), common to three of four PARs (time, appearance, clothing, and player agency), and idiosyncratic to specific PARs (significance, character narratives, game dynamics, liminality, and gratifications). Aggregated descriptions for each PAR type were subjected to semantic network analysis to identify patterns in salient avatar components, and then qualitatively compared across the four PARs. Secondary analysis of N = 1,201 avatar descriptions parceled them by PAR type (avatars as asocial Objects, psychologically merged extensions of Me, hybrid me/other Symbiotes, and authentically social Other). Toward illuminating nuances in PARs, we examine the content and structure of players’ internalizations of avatars as evidenced by descriptions of those digital bodies. Different PARs are based on different internalizations (i.e., mental models) for what an avatar is and why it matters. Avatars are generally understood as singular bodies however, we argue they are functional and phenomenological assemblages-networks of social and technological components that are internalized by players as networks of knowledge about the avatar. In playing videogames, players often create avatars as extensions of agency into those spaces, where the player-avatar relationship (PAR) both shapes gameplay and is the product of gameplay experiences. ![]()
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