Value creation in the metaverse age: a thematic analysis of press releases

Abstract

PurposeSince Zuckerberg's announcement to change Facebook's name to Meta Platforms Inc. on October 28, 2021, the concept of the metaverse has gained unprecedented popularity in the business world. Tech giants, SMEs and start-ups across various sectors are making substantial investments in metaverse-related technologies. Despite this, scholarly research in entrepreneurship and strategic management regarding the metaverse remains limited. This paper, grounded in value creation theory, aims to analyze how value is generated in the metaverse era.Design/methodology/approachThis paper conducts a thematic analysis of 895 press releases published by LexisNexis between October 28, 2021, and October 28, 2022. The analysis identifies the primary emerging themes related to value creation in the metaverse age.FindingsThe thematic analysis reveals four significant emerging themes concerning value creation in the metaverse age: (1) factors enabling value creation, (2) digital resources contributing to value creation, (3) motives driving value creation and (4) practices of value creation.Originality/valueThis paper represents the inaugural attempt to analyze the metaverse through a value creation lens. Given the substantial investments and growing academic interest in the metaverse, understanding value creation in this context is a pressing concern. Additionally, this study provides valuable insights and suggests critical questions for future research on the metaverse.

Where Are We Now?—Exploring the Metaverse Representations to Find Digital Twins

“…In this way, we understand that the Digital Twins concept allows the Metaverse to achieve complete consistency between the real and virtual worlds [47]. Some authors also claim that the Digital Twins are part of the three development stages of the Metaverse [55], showing the potential significant transformation with incorporated technology [104].…”

“…As for our first objective, how the Metaverse is represented, we can observe the relationship between the Digital Twins and virtual reality. The virtual reality concept appears naturally since the Metaverse can be defined as a computer-generated environment [12] that connects users through avatars [85], creating an immersive virtual environment [68] centralizing platforms in different activities [104] through this technology. As for the Digital Twins concept relation, we could understand that they are a part of the technology use or can be used by the Metaverse since they are connected with digital and virtual reality.…”

Metaverse Acceptance by the Accounting Community as a Premise of Sustainable Behavior

“…Future research will be oriented to digital twins as an integral part of the metaverse because they can replicate reality continuously and in real time, leading to increased productivity by connecting activities from the real environment, in the mirror, to the virtual environment in different headquarters of the same organization, which stimulates the creation and development of virtual teams. Ferrigno et al [59] (p. 351) identified four elements of value creation in the metaverse, as follows: "(1) value creation enablers, (2) digital resources for value creation, (3) motives for value creation and (4) value creation practices." Our future research will be oriented toward verifying the relationship between value creation and sustainable development in the metaverse environment.…”

Strategies for digital entrepreneurship success: the role of digital implementation and dynamic capabilities

“…in cases where the digital technology used is very novel).Even more so, the entire industry might be novel and complex (e.g. the underexplored domain of the metaverse;Ferrigno et al, 2023).…”