Professor Wade Halvorson from the University of Western Australia’s (UWA) School of Business has won the Pearson Education prize for the best case study paper at the 2010 Academy of Marketing Conference.

Wade Halvorson teaching at the UWA sky theatre / Image - Courtesy UWA

The Academy of Marketing annual conference is the largest academic marketing conference in the United Kingdom.

The case study concerns "Virtual Dublin", a very successful online business in the online virtual world ‘Second Life’.

This follows UWA’s Jay Jay Jegathesen from the School of Physics nomination into the top 10 of the 2010 Linden Prize, which honours contributions to art, architecture, research and teaching in virtual worlds.

Prof Halvorson uses Second Life as a teaching tool to undergraduate and postgraduate students studying for their Bachelor of Commerce.

"This means that Second Life businesses can be taken seriously,” says Prof Halverson.

“The case study presents a viable business model that works in the virtual world and has increased our knowledge in this field.

“Virtual world businesses have seen exponential growth in the revenue of virtual products reaching a staggering USD 2 billion."

Professor Halvorson described a paradigm breaking moment while he was completing his PhD in Sweden while using Second Life to conduct classes in Perth while also simultaneously giving the students access to a guest lecturer from Canada.

"It opens up the world to my students. We have students at the computer labs conducting international consumer behaviours. This allows me to conduct tutorial studies on branded communities such as at Harley Davidson Island in Second Life and give students exposure to community members without leaving their desktop,” says Prof Halverson.

With its official launch on the 2 October 2009, the UWA presence in Second Life has seen a meteoric rise and is recognized leader in the virtual world with many of its activities captured on their very popular blog http://www.uwainsl.blogspot.com/.

Comments (0)