Riassunto analitico
In the last decade consumers’ identities changed: from the “homo oeconomicus”, who carried out their own choices rationally, making a costs and benefits analysis associated with the purchase; to the “homo ludens”, oriented towards playing, entertainment, emotions, and gratification. While the “homo economicus” faces companies, that sell their products showing the intrinsic benefits of the item; the “homo ludens” faces brands, that sell to the consumer something more than a product, a sense of belonging to a community (Ferraresi, 2003).
The “homo ludens” needs are met thanks to the experience economy, a unique and growing trend, based on business experiences that attract and retain customers, which is in the sight of advanced economies around the world (De Leon, 2017). When companies organize memorable events for customers to discover, enjoy, participate, and cherish memories, the result is an experiential offering. Experience-oriented marketing strategies are driving innovation looking for the best experiential offering that offers an added value for the consumers, and are emerging in almost all industries and companies, because of the high effectiveness they have on customer retainment and loyalty.
The world is experiencing a significant shift from rational to emotional, so the companies that aim to retain and attract consumers must be able to capture people’s emotions. Effective experiential offerings are able to touch the customer’s emotions, aiming to reach another crucial point of experiential marketing: the customer engagement. Customer engagement and customer experience are today important themes for modern economies, and based on these aspects, companies are trying to also revolutionize the digital ecosystem and the digital communication to be able to touch those aspects in the digital environment (Morgan-Thomas, Dessart, Veloutsou, 2020).
The recent Covid-19 pandemic has greatly amplified the process of digital transformation to meet the new needs of consumers. After that period, people have been more involved in experiences because they missed almost one or two years of life. Those experiences, because of the several lockdowns, were mostly made through digital devices, and this has the results today to have increased heavily the proximity to technology to a huge variety of consumers.
By putting together those two aspects it is really evident that after 2020 the concept of experience must change prospective becoming something that can be explored and lived both in real life and in digital platforms. In this small but intense period a huge slice of the population enjoyed virtual spaces and worlds, thanks to the increasing popularity of the gaming industry, and it is precisely in this reality that comes the boom of the Metaverse , the immersive technology pillar of web 3.0 and its possible applications in the company reality.
Because the Metaverse is in its development stage there are other communication channels offering immersive experiences to increase the engaging power of the communication strategies: 3D interactive websites. This study aims to understand if 3D websites are a step between the web 2.0 and 3.0, working as expected by the theory.
To analyse the research questions of this thesis, a qualitative analysis is implemented through the case study tool. Two cases study are considered, the of the web design studio Backdoor and one of its first creations, the Domenico Orefice’s Hybridverse official website.
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Abstract
In the last decade consumers’ identities changed: from the “homo oeconomicus”, who carried out their own choices rationally, making a costs and benefits analysis associated with the purchase; to the “homo ludens”, oriented towards playing, entertainment, emotions, and gratification. While the “homo economicus” faces companies, that sell their products showing the intrinsic benefits of the item; the “homo ludens” faces brands, that sell to the consumer something more than a product, a sense of belonging to a community (Ferraresi, 2003).
The “homo ludens” needs are met thanks to the experience economy, a unique and growing trend, based on business experiences that attract and retain customers, which is in the sight of advanced economies around the world (De Leon, 2017). When companies organize memorable events for customers to discover, enjoy, participate, and cherish memories, the result is an experiential offering. Experience-oriented marketing strategies are driving innovation looking for the best experiential offering that offers an added value for the consumers, and are emerging in almost all industries and companies, because of the high effectiveness they have on customer retainment and loyalty.
The world is experiencing a significant shift from rational to emotional, so the companies that aim to retain and attract consumers must be able to capture people’s emotions. Effective experiential offerings are able to touch the customer’s emotions, aiming to reach another crucial point of experiential marketing: the customer engagement. Customer engagement and customer experience are today important themes for modern economies, and based on these aspects, companies are trying to also revolutionize the digital ecosystem and the digital communication to be able to touch those aspects in the digital environment (Morgan-Thomas, Dessart, Veloutsou, 2020).
The recent Covid-19 pandemic has greatly amplified the process of digital transformation to meet the new needs of consumers. After that period, people have been more involved in experiences because they missed almost one or two years of life. Those experiences, because of the several lockdowns, were mostly made through digital devices, and this has the results today to have increased heavily the proximity to technology to a huge variety of consumers.
By putting together those two aspects it is really evident that after 2020 the concept of experience must change prospective becoming something that can be explored and lived both in real life and in digital platforms. In this small but intense period a huge slice of the population enjoyed virtual spaces and worlds, thanks to the increasing popularity of the gaming industry, and it is precisely in this reality that comes the boom of the Metaverse , the immersive technology pillar of web 3.0 and its possible applications in the company reality.
Because the Metaverse is in its development stage there are other communication channels offering immersive experiences to increase the engaging power of the communication strategies: 3D interactive websites. This study aims to understand if 3D websites are a step between the web 2.0 and 3.0, working as expected by the theory.
To analyse the research questions of this thesis, a qualitative analysis is implemented through the case study tool. Two cases study are considered, the of the web design studio Backdoor and one of its first creations, the Domenico Orefice’s Hybridverse official website.
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