Case Study: “second Life Strategy of American Apparel”

The Internet has become a very important part of today’s life. Its rapid expansion during the past few decades has broadened significantly the horizons for many activities. As a result several organizations such as large or smaller corporations have taken advantage of the new opportunities that the Web had to offer. In this essay we examine the example of American Apparel which opened a store in a virtual reality network called Second Life. American Apparel is an American clothing firm vertically integrated acting as a manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and distributor based in Los Angeles, California. The company also performs its own design, advertising and marketing. Second Life on the other hand is a social network service which uses a 3-D virtual world interface in which users called residents are represented by avatars that they create. It is developed by Linden Research in 2003. What connects Second Life to American Apparel is that the later viewed it as an excellent marketing opportunity in order to reach an audience with specific characteristics that would have been hard to reach through traditional means of advertising. Thus, the