Virtual Worlds as Environments for Virtual Customer Integration

Since companies have recognized that the integration of customers into processes of product innovation has become a critical factor for success, new concepts of virtual customer integration have been developed to investigate customer´s needs and to identify customer-generated ideas. Virtual worlds seem to be promising in means of support customer integration because of their three-dimensional environments, their ability to support immersion, and their advanced approaches of communication and collaboration. However, until now very little research exists about how to adapt virtual worlds to this field. In our contribution, we analyze different types of virtual worlds and identify their specific characteristics and abilities to support virtual customer integration.