The eLab eXchange has just launched "The Web of Misery," a prediction market tournament with 10 markets that reflect new online indicators of economic distress.  Come and give it your best shot - forecast just how bad you think the economy is going to get in the next few months!  Here's one of the markets:

During periods of economic hardship, conventional wisdom suggets that some people tend to increase their level of certain behaviors, for example, they may "cling to guns or religion," or perhaps turn to alcohol or gambling in an attempt to relieve any pressures they may be feeling about a "rough patch." Additionally, the skyrocketing costs of food, health care and gas, not to mention the real estate downturn, suggest that, in general, many consumers will become more careful about how they spend their hard-earned dollars.

]]> http://sloan.ucr.edu/2008/05/06/elab-exchange-web-of-misery-which-online-indicators-of-distress-will-grow-most/feed/ http://sloan.ucr.edu/2008/03/17/elab-exchange-predicts-world-of-warcraft-subscriber-growth/ http://sloan.ucr.edu/2008/03/17/elab-exchange-predicts-world-of-warcraft-subscriber-growth/#comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:43 +0000 Donna Hoffman http://sloan.ucr.edu/2008/03/17/elab-exchange-predicts-world-of-warcraft-subscriber-growth/ eLab eXchange members were pretty accurate in their prediction of how much World of Warcraft would grow from 2006 to 2007 in terms of subscribers.

Members predicted that the wildly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game would grow 27% in 2007, compared to 2006. According to Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft reached 10 million members worldwide at the end of 2007.

At the end of 2006, WoW had 8 million members. This amounts to a 25% increase: pretty close to the eLab eXchange prediction of 27%.

Congratulations to eLab eXchange members for once again proving they have a darn good crystal ball!

On Monday afternoon, I scratched my head when my handheld displayed a New York Times alert that Spitzer was linked to a prostitution ring.  My immediate reaction was that he had somehow been caught up in some kind of money laundering or corruption scandal.  Or maybe he was a kingpin behind the ring's operations. Still, this was hard to fathom given the Eliot Ness white knight persona he had so carefully crafted, especially in his days as New York AG.  And when I clicked on the link, I thought surely I was reading it wrong when the story said he'd been captured in a Federal wiretap and identified as "Client 9."  Imagine that!  The prostitution ring linkage wasn't nearly as interesting as Spitzer turning out to be some kind of corrupt white-collar criminal.  If only.  Instead, The Honorable Elliot "Ness" Spitzer was just a john!

Within hours,

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Since Zillow has no way of knowing what these houses look like inside, nor which house has the nicer view, or the prettier street, or the best "upgrades," it just makes no sense whatsoever that the zestimates would range from, wait for it, $736,000 to $1,032,000! 

That's right!  Zillow's algorithm computes a difference of nearly

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In terms of the top three most popular shopping days this past holiday season, eLab eXchange members hit two out of three, correctly predicting that Cyber Monday, November 26, 2007, would be the third most popular shopping day.

Members predicted that Monday, December 17 would be the second most popular day, but according to Nielsen Online, Tuesday, December 4 was second.

Congratulations to the members of the eLab eXchange for accurately predicting this market!

If this estimate is any indication, it suggests we could be in for a rough year.

The most popular was judged in terms of the total number of unique customers for each retailer in the month of December 2007. Unique customers are defined as people who completed one or more retail purchases on the site.

Congratulations to the members of the eLab eXchange for accurately predicting the top two winners in this market!

Not only did members correctly predict the most successful online holiday promotion, they correctly predicted four of the top five most successful promotional tactics, according to the 2007 Shop.org/BizRate eHoliday Mood Study (Wave 4). In addition to free shipping with no conditions, these include free shipping with conditions, saving with coupons, and online only sales.

Congratulations to the members of the eLab eXchange for accurately predicting the top four winners in this market!

The eLab eXchange predicted that Facebook traffic would grow 25% from October to December 2007. But Facebook traffic, measured in terms of growth of unique visitors from Nielsen Online's NetView audience measurement service, increased only 16%.

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 Visit MSI for more details.

Cezary Ostrowski, aHead
http://www.tutaj.com.pl/ahead/

Nadia Hennrich
http://nadiahennrich.com/

Visual artist and composer Cezary Ostrowski's aHead agency, based in Poland, has developed numerous sims in Second Life, including the newly opened Slang Life, as well as Digital Zion, Tuscany, De Lodi and Costa Smeralda.  Ostrowski/aHead will be responsible for builidng and scripting eLab City.  Nadia Hennrich has an extensive background as a film editor in Germany, Chicago, and Los Angeles, is an accomplished Second Life designer, and will serve as creative consultant. 

The Ostrowski/Hennrich team has begun development of eLab City - development of the islands eLab City West and eLab City East should take approximately two months.

Online Holiday Sales
Most Popular Online Holiday Shopping Day
Most Popular Consumer Electronics Retailer
Most Successful Online Holiday Promotions

Try your hand at judging the impact of this year's holiday season!

In arriving at the winner, the judges evaluated not only traffic statistics for each site (reach, page views, number of sites linking in), but also the customer experience offered on each site.

In terms of the traffic stats, Kaboodle topped the list, closely followed by ThisNext. Buzzillions, and ShopWiki were a distant third and fourth. Although Kaboodle is the top ranked social shopping site in our list, in terms of traffic, its average page views have dropped 15% in the last 3 months, possibly suggesting consumer fatigue. In contrast, average page views for ThisNext have dropped only 6% during the same period. (It's entirely possible that the entire category may need to be rethought, but we'll leave that for a different day.)

Our panel of experts judged Kaboodle good looking and easy to navigate. However,

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Among the 12 ideas in the Google/YouTube prediction market, our panel of experts judged the Ad Overlays on the Video for the First 10 Seconds or So and Company Sponsorhip of pages, categories, channels or communities as offering Google the greatest opportunities for monetizing YouTube through ads.

The eLab eXchange voted ad overlays somewhere around the video, not on the video itself as the clear favorite, followed by short pre-rolls,and company sponsorships.

Short mid-rolls received the most negative tokens from eLab eXchange members.

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eLab City will be a two-island sim in Second Life. It is being developed by the University of California, Riverside, Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, for the purpose of studying consumer behavior in virtual worlds. eLab City will be a “live-work-play” community, providing a working laboratory and subject pool for academic research. Most academic sims in Second Life are “virtual campuses” oriented to classroom instruction and course support. There are, however, no academic Second Life projects that study how consumers behave in virtual worlds.

For further details, please visit:  http://elabcity.com/

Presented at the Association for Consumer Research Pre-Conference, "Consumer Online:  Ten Years Later," Memphis, TN, October 25, 2007.

Download powerpoint sldes (long version of presentation)

Scion received the greatest number of positive tokens by eLab eXchange members, and was the selection of the expert judges.

The judges considered both traffic levels in Second Life as well as the strategic approach and implementation taken by the companies.

In terms of traffic, Mercedes-Benz topped the list, followed by Reebok, Coldwell Banker, and then Scion.

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The eLab eXchange is a prediction market that allows you to judge the likelihood of future events in the Internet retailing space like which companies have the best chance of making it in Second Life, which social shopping sites are the most engaging or the percentage growth in online holiday sales this year compared to last.

Ready to start judging?  Sign up now - its absolutely free and only takes a few seconds to create an account.

As soon as you sign up, you can start making predictions about future Internet retailing outcomes and be on your way to winning cool prizes.

Abstract.  Although the flow construct has been widely studied over the past decade in marketing and related fields, it has proven to be an elusive construct to measure and model.  In this paper, we first examine two of the most important themes in flow research in the last decade: the conceptualization and measurement of flow in online environments and the marketing outcomes of flow.  Second, while the unique characteristics of the Internet contributed to our belief that flow was an important construct for understanding consumer use of the Web in 1996, the environment of the Web itself has changed radically over the past decade.  Thus, we consider the current context of the Internet for the role and application of the flow construct, as well as important related constructs that will be useful for understanding compelling experiences in the contemporary online environment.   Download pdf.

We investigate egocentric biases in mental accounting within the context of information-driven consumer seller relationships. Our research suggests that consumers keep “loose mental accounts” of exchange benefits and costs that are balanced when resource exchanges are either contingent or temporally integrated (i.e., exchanged in the same transaction). However, when non-contingent resource exchange is temporally separated (specifically when exchange benefits precede exchange costs), or when bias correction is impeded in the same transaction, consumers keep two mental accounts, assigning differential value to marketers’ versus their own resources. Consequently, consumers egocentrically devalue- and therefore feeling less obligated to reciprocate- firms’ benefit offerings.   Download pdf.