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News Release from: GMI (Global Market Insite) | Subject: Second Life Interview Corner
Edited by the Marketingservicestalk Editorial
Team on 10 September 2007
Second Life Interview Corner quizzes
residents
Market intelligence provider GMI, along with Amsterdam-based market research firm DervalResearch, have launched Second Life Interview Corner to get qualitative feedback from residents.
Second Life Interview Corner (SLIC) enables corporate brands to get qualitative feedback from Second Life residents in a friendly and cost-effective way Powered by GMI's market research software platform, it provides corporate brands with a brand-new perspective on conducting one-to-one research interviews in a virtual environment
This article was originally published on Marketingservicestalk on 9 Jul 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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With SLIC, market researchers can now poll residents of the virtual world on hot topics - in Second Life (SL) as well as in real life - such as collaborative development, customisation or waiting behaviour.
As soon as a respondent selects a topic and sits on the related sofa, the interview starts.
The sofa asks open or multiple-choice questions via the Second Life chat function, and respondents' answers are recorded.
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SLIC is fully automated and integrated to the SL user interface.
"I've never been interviewed by a sofa before," admitted Prof Tom Novak, co-director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, University of California, Riverside, USA.
"But I found the SLIC interviewing process much more natural than I'd expected.
"For one thing, in Second Life, you become accustomed to having text chats with people, so a text chat with a sofa seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
"There was also the visual image of seeing my avatar comfortably lying down on a plush sofa while it asked me questions - all in all, a very interesting and productive way to spend some time in Second Life.
"If these interviewing sofas were combined with an incentive, they could put camping chairs out of business in Second Life".
By being available 24x7x365, SLIC offers a good geographic representativity of respondents at a competitive cost.
Respondents are recruited in real life as well as in Second Life via 'word of virtual mouth' and groups.
Respondents can be rewarded with Linden Dollars or a gift at the end of the interview according to their gender or preferences.
Respondents are also invited to join the SLIC group/panel in order to be contacted for further surveys and interviews.
"This is one of the first examples of truly immersive surveys in Second Life, not relying on residents opening their web browser, but their avatars interacting with objects and being interviewed in-world," explained Mario Menti, solutions architect for GMI in London.
"Survey experience is key - the more engaging and rewarding the survey experience is, the more likely it will be seen as an integral and useful part of the virtual world, rather than a disjointed bolt-on from the outside".
"SLIC is definitively a friendly, cost-effective and powerful tool to get feedback from residents when they are available and roaming in their virtual world," explained Prof Diana Derval, CEO of DervalResearch and author of the book Wait Marketing.
"The answers we get are more trustworthy as the respondent doesn't rush to share his/her view.
"Not only our customers from Second Life, mainly brands specialised in entertainment, are interested in SLIC, but also real-life brands who realised that questioning consumers in the carpark of a supermarket while they are busy loading their car is not the best way to go".
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