Enthusiasm for the metaverse as a business asset seems to have cooled down a bit. OK, a lot. At least, judging by Google searches for the term.
Nonetheless, if there’s one area where the Metaverse is still promising to deliver business value is in terms of generating customer insight. The combination of technologies such as virtual or augmented reality, haptics, blockchain and internet connectivity create an unique environment for experimentation and innovation, enabling firms to observe actual consumer response to product concepts or ideas. See, for instance, this example of kids designing Nike trainers on a metaverse platform – this kind of exercise can show to Nike, for instance, whether customers want minimalist designs or busy ones.
Jan Kietzmann, Ben Keegan and I have been exploring when and how metaverse realms can assist with the generation of customer insight. We presented our emerging conceptual framework last week, at the AMS World Marketing Congress, at the University of Kent.
Here is the slide set – side note: blue colour refers to closed realms, red to open ones; and purple to both:
AMSWMC MV NPD.pptx from Ana Canhoto
Our hope is that this work will help practitioners decide whether to invest on metaverse events and, if so, whether to focus on closed or open environments. We would love to work with businesses using (or looking at using) the metaverse for customer insight to refine this framework. If this is you, please get it touch with us.
Ana Canhoto 
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