Retailers open shop in Second Life

Just in time for the holidays, the Canadian postal operator Canada Post has launched the online community of Maple Grove, a fictional burg in the virtual world of Second Life. Within that community are virtual representations of ten retailers, where consumers can browse and buy real products.

"Shoppers really have the opportunity to shop online and not even need to leave Second Life," said Stephanie Bullock, director of market segmentation for Canada Post. "They can do their holiday shopping within Second Life and purchase real merchandise that gets shipped to them."

Among the retailers that have set up shop in Maple Grove are Toys 'R' Us, Sears, The Shopping Channel and Sky Mall.

SLIDE SHOW: Take a photo tour of the Maple Grove retail community

This is the second year that Canada Post has launched a retail initiative in Second Life, but Bullock said last year was an experimentation with the concept and this year's program represents a major expansion.

"Our presence within Second Life is unique," she said. "I don't think there's another place in there that has so many retailers together, with the scale that we do."

The retailers of Maple Grove offer a limited selection within their virtual stores, but all of them offer shoppers the ability to buy from their main Web site, with full selection, within the Second Life interface. Canada Post is offering the service to retailers at no cost.

To drive traffic to the community, the company has 12 in-game concerts scheduled. This past weekend, it held a scavenger hunt that required shoppers to visit all ten stores and find specified items, in exchange for a prize.

Owned and operated by Linden Labs, Second Life is an online virtual world where players create avatars of themselves. Those avatars can then explore environments, connect with other users, and acquire virtual property.

Do consumers want e-commerce in Second Life?

Although the technology is in place to execute real shopping in a virtual world, consumer demand and desire for the concept remains to be seen.

Josh Millard spends a lot of time online — he's one of the full-time moderators for the social blog MetaFilter, a job that keeps him connected to the Internet virtually all of the time. Even so, he says he'd likely only buy something via Second Life if a near-perfect storm of conditions was in place: "If there's no markup, I'm already playing, it's from a vendor who has already established some online-retail cred, I'd be buying it anyway, it's not a time-sensitive purchase, and the process of buying it is not significantly a pain in the ass: sure," he said. "But if any of that doesn't hold? I probably wouldn't bother."

Ed Zitron, who covers online gaming and communications for Future Publishing and Eurogamer Network, is even more skeptical that the effort will pay off.

"Second Life currently exists in a rather a strange bubble at the moment — it's lost its sheen and has now become almost a parody of itself, littered with a great deal of at best propaganda and at worst sex-trade operations," he said. "Linden Labs have failed to keep Second Life relevant — both visually and technologically — and it amazes me that companies would risk their resources on creating built-in stores. With the freedom of creative expression in Second Life, I question whether even having a presence is beneficial anymore — or whether it creates the chance of actually doing damage to your company's brand."

Robert Gourley is creative director of Mojave, an ad agency that has created experiences for brands in Second Life and other social online spaces. He says Maple Grove is an interesting attempt, but it doesn't take advantage of the virtual world's potential.

"Brands in Second Life have the freedom to move away from real world metaphors and engage customers in more interesting ways," he said. "I don't see users being excited about logging onto Second Life and walking around a replica of a mall, live music or not. Overall, I think it's best to look at Second Life as a marketing strategy rather than retail channel. The exception to this is digital purchase like music, apps and games, which is a much easier sell to an already connected audience."

If nothing else, Gourley says it's certainly a PR win for Canada Post. "But I wonder if the mall will just be a virtual ghost town this time next year."