Latin America. In 2021 Mark Zuckerberg announced the change of name from Facebook to Meta and presented his particular vision of the metaverse. Since then, speculation in the world of marketing about the impact that this new technological reality will have on consumers, brands and the relationship that unites them have been a constant.
Now, a double study led by doctors Méndez Aparicio, Izquierdo Yusta and Jiménez Zarco, researchers from the i2TIC group of the Economics and Business Studies of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, UOC, takes a holistic look at this phenomenon and points out that, despite the great potential of this new platform, the metaverse still does not have a high enough degree of maturity to be able to define what its model will be and how Brands will be adapted. However, it does seem clear that it will be a lasting and transformative reality.
The metaverse has been conceptualized as an alternative vision of life where, through its avatar and based on virtual reality and gamification, the user discovers new needs in a virtual and parallel world modeled according to their own criteria. However, currently neither the technology to access it has been democratized nor is there a large volume of content and activities available in this virtual space.
"Today we have many metaverses not connected to each other. Each company makes a different bet, they are not interconnected and we do not know which model will prosper. It is a concept still to be built," explains Jiménez Zarco, also a professor at the UOC. Therefore, from the commercial side "it is not easy to integrate current marketing practices, which combine face-to-face and digitality, and this will be the great challenge of companies," he adds.
Despite this, the metaverse is a reality that is here to stay. "People like to play and, in addition, the metaverse resurrects the flow experience of the first websites from the challenge posed by technology. This ability to penetrate messages from gamification becomes an excellent advertising opportunity for brands and a new channel, in a growing sector such as video games, whose forecast for 2027 is to reach 401,000 million dollars of turnover, "explains Méndez Aparicio.
The UOC researchers have given an overview of the state of maturation of the metaverse and its future prospects in two different articles, in the UOC's Oikonomics magazine and in the University of Navarra's Business and Humanism Magazine. In them, Méndez Aparicio and Jiménez Zarco explain that there are companies that already use the metaverse to simulate proofs of concept and resistance of products (such as, for example, BMW), to improve safety in extreme environments (Iberdrola) or health (the new surgeons of the metaverse), but even so it is still daring to think of the metaverse as a point of confluence of companies and consumers. "The metaverse has a new versatility that changes the rules of the game. It's a fluid reality. There I am whoever I want to be and I can change, and this supposes a discontinuity that is difficult for companies to manage," they argue.
According to these articles, the new metaverse supposes a world of speculation in which realities can be invented, constructed or reproduced where they can relate, buy and work. "This implies an important transformation of companies and respond to the needs of a 100% digitized customer, and may require new currencies and forms of payment still to be standardized and legislated," they explain.
Starting from the basis that current marketing has changed a lot compared to years ago and is based on the relationship of the brand with the user in a global sense, it will be necessary to see what kind of interactions are generated in that environment to avoid problems or distortions, as well as if it is a suitable channel for information, interaction and even selling.
In addition to virtual production and payment and changes in advertising strategy, among the big unknowns to be resolved are the validity of traditional metrics and KPIs, consideration as own or earned media, the concept of sponsor and various ethical components, according to the research.
No data or research
Considering the novelty of the phenomenon and its transformative potential, the new metaverse scenario will need to involve research. According to Jiménez Zarco, right now it is difficult to investigate, because the advances and incursions of companies in this field are still incipient and there is no data on social behavior or consumption in the metaverse.
Therefore, in the future it will be necessary to investigate this new way of conceiving reality involving areas of knowledge as diverse as law and political science, art and humanities, economics and business, health sciences, digital skills, the city and urban planning, computer science, multimedia and communication, and teaching, among others.
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