Digital marketing strategy- eWOM influences over user´s participation and buying behaviour in the virtual world Habbo

Abstract

This thesis aspires to map three main areas as following digital marketing, virtual world and the participation and buying behaviour of the users in Habbo. The Habbo users and the fan-sites of Habbo play as the lead actors in this study. The study aims to understand the Habbo as a virtual world, the electronic word of mouth (eWOM) strategy in Habbo. Additionally, it intends to recognise the motivation of participants in the electronic word of mouth process via the two campaigns of Habbo. Online ethnography is the research method of this study. Besides observing the Habbo hotel, two main fan-site forums are observed for the input of the analysis. Online ethnography method allows the study to achieve different results such as distinguishing the types of communicators in the eWOM, identifying the motives of the information providers and information receivers in eWOM. The method leads explicitly this study to find the critical role of gender in the involvement of eWOM´s participants.