3D Virtual Worlds: Business and Learning Opportunities

Abstract

Virtual worlds (VWs) are rampant and easily accessible to commoninternet users nowadays. Millions of users are already living theirvirtual lives in these worlds. Moreover, the number of users isincreasing continuously. The purpose of this paper is to review all thebusiness opportunities on these virtual worlds along with the learningopportunities for the real world companies and business students. Thispaper clearly and precisely defines the virtual worlds in the context ofsocial networking sites and also aims at discussing the past, presentand future of VWs. All the possible business opportunities for the realworld companies including advertisement & communication, retailingopportunities, application for human resource management, marketingresearch and organizations' internal process management through virtualworlds are critically reviewed here. In addition to the discussioncurrent learning and training opportunities for the real world companiesand business students are also reviewed. The paper aims at proving thatthe VWs are full of business and marketing applications and they couldbe widely used by the real world companies for effective and efficientbusiness operations.