Marketing opportunities in the Metaverse. A narrative literature review in an interdisciplinary perspective and some exploratory cases.

Metaverse represents a virtual and multi-dimensional environment that combines elements of the real world with the virtual world and provides users with a wide range of engaging experiences. Moreover, Metaverse is rapidly evolving as a research field with the potential to impact several scientific areas, such as social sciences, technology, innovation, medicine, and health. In the meanwhile, Metaverse offers important perspectives for business, and it is mainly used as a marketing platform by companies in various industrial sectors. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the state of the art about Metaverse, adopting both the point of view of business and consumers. A narrative literature review was then performed, adopting a multi-disciplinary perspective. For this reason, authors selected scientific articles from different disciplinary fields and business-oriented bibliographic sources such as handbooks and company reports. Results show that Metaverse, utilizing Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), creates a distinct marketing realm with heightened immersion, differing from traditional digital marketing. The contribution of this paper is to illustrate the different conceptualizations with academics conceive marketing in the Metaverse. The study also shows how value propositions differ in offering unique, personalized, and innovative virtual experiences, which aim to engage the consumer at different customer journey steps. This review suggests new investigative paths for both academics and firms. Nevertheless, all facets of the Metaverse could not be covered. Further studies could explore different ways Metaverse is implemented in marketing strategies and face challenges regarding the integration of Metaverse with current channels.