Novak, Thomas P. (2010), "eLab City: A Platform for Academic Research on Virtual Worlds," under review at Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.



The eLab City project in Second Life is a laboratory environment for the study of user behavior in virtual worlds. This paper describes the origin and development of the eLab City project, which includes virtual infrastructure constructed in Second Life, a panel of Second Life users who have agreed to participate in research studies,… Continue

Many if not most new product or service offerings fail to achieve their hoped-for market acceptance or do so only after long and expensive trial and error. To improve these odds, some companies have begun working more directly with customers to “co-create” innovations. This raises the question: Who are the “best” consumers to engage in this way? Some look to “lead users,” others to especially “innovative” consumers.…



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Hoffman, Donna L., Praveen Kopalle, and Thomas P. Novak, "The “Right” Consumers for Better Concepts: Identifying and Using Consumers High in Emergent Nature to Further Develop New Product Concepts" (June 9, 2009



While much research has emphasized improving current new product concept techniques, little work has focused on trait-based approaches that specify which consumers are the “right” ones to use in the new product development process, particularly in the consumer goods industry.… Continue

White, Tiffany B., Thomas P. Novak and Donna L. Hoffman, “Evidence and Consequences of Egocentric Accounting Biases in Customer-Seller Relationships” (September 9, 2007).



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… Continue