Why would anyone buy a virtual T-Shirt?!

[Matthew Warneford]

To many adults (and parents!) the very idea of spending money on virtual goods seems strange and even unsustainable; why would anyone spend money on a digital T-Shirt, it doesn't even exist!

In this post I'm going to try and answer that question.

[randy]

How about this --5 almost exactly the same items costing 2 cents to 3 cents ---so I spend 10 minutes hunting catalog pages to find cheepest of 5 -- so 10 minutes of work is worth to me $6 and I take that time to save 1 cent
There must be something more that moniitary that has people vertual shoping for hours
And if Kids get involved in this they will spend and spend no mater what their perents think

[Matthew Warneford]

Thanks for clarifying Cecil. I think we agree that intangibles have value. Through our research with parents we have found that there is a significant disconnect - they have trouble understand why they should pay for their children to buy virtual goods. I think your take is interesting - we pay to experience a film, which is completely intangible.

Matt

[Cecil Hirvi]

I suppose I took your initial question about how people find it strange to value something that "doesn't even exist" is a strange question if people already pay to experience ideas that don't really exist. These ideas exist on tangible delivery items ie books, films and artworks which as hard materials, are not part of the idea at all. Perhaps you could have worded your initial question a bit more thoughtfully so I understood it more clearly.

[Matthew Warneford]

I'm not sure I follow Cecil - In the post (link here) I've tried to explain why I think people do spend money on virtual items.

I'm not suggesting we ignore virtual goods, but by understand the players motives we can start to optimize our strategies.

Matt

[Cecil Hirvi]

Well, ideas don't really exist either. Should we just ignore them?