Get real about virtual consumers - they'll be a massive market

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 14 November 2007 04:12

Your IT - Entertainment

Within ten years vendors of real goods and services might have to devote the bulk of their sales and marketing efforts to the virtual online personas of their target consumers if they want to succeed. According to IT research firm, Gartner, "within 10 years, the largest influence on all purchases will be the virtual experience associated with them. By 2015, more money will be spent marketing and selling to multiple anonymous online personas than marketing and selling offline."

Gartner has dubbed this emerging virtual consumer market as 'Generation V', but says that, unlike the current demographic breakdown into baby boomers, generation X and generation Y which discriminate by age, Generation V spans all age groups. "As more baby boomers (who are living longer) and the younger generations go online and participate/communicate in a flat virtual environment, the generational distinctions break down. Customers will hop across segments at various times of life for various reasons and are likely to act like several generations at any given time."

According to Adam Sarner, principal analyst at Gartner, "For Generation V, the virtual environment provides many aspects of a level playing field, where age, gender, class and income of individuals are less important and less rewarded than competence, motivation and effort. For example, an 11-year old individual can be the leading 'go to' person for advice on how to upgrade/hack a digital video recorder (DVR) for more recording space. An unpopular office worker can be a highly revered, accomplished 40th-level half-elf in World of Warcraft. The opportunity for reputation, prestige, influence and personal growth provides a powerful social draw for the masses to spend more time in a virtual world."

Sarner added: "While traditional wisdom has focused on customer identification for one-to-one targeted marketing campaigns, cross-selling and so on, the reality of people creating multiple anonymous personas (such as in Second Life or World of Warcraft), blogs, online communities (such as YouTube and Digg), and the sheer power of their influence means that every customer will have multiple online personas driving business relationships with companies."

Gartner says the Generation V market offers rich pickings for companies that learn to tap into it. "By 2030, there will be twice as many people over age 65 in the United States with 70 times the real median income of their corresponding age group in 1990...Companies will have new reach (and access to their growing discretionary income) that they could not get before.

Reaching these 'virtual consumer's might present new challenges for companies and require a radical rethink of sales and marketing strategies, but the upside, according to Sarner, is that gathering detailed information on them is much easier than with real consumers. "If companies follow a truly persona-centric approach, they can use the highly relevant information the persona leaves. Although the real person may never be known, far more intimate information of the persona's actions, personality, lifestyle habits and attitudes can be collected and exploited for business goals."