|
More about the "Information Failure" in the Real Money Trading Market
As reported by scientific and economics studies, there is a huge information failure in the real money trading market. It occurs in the three crucial steps of trading: prior to trading, during trading and after trading.
The real problem resides in the virtuality of the trade and in the anonymity of both buyer and seller's online activity. Both the buyer and the sellers might be totally unaware of who they are doing business with. This is called "information absence", and it occurs in most of the virtual currency purchases.
A buyer, and especially a first time buyer, have no clue about the merchant trustworthiness, their real location and their customer's feedback. Most of all, a buyer may be uncertain whether the products will actually be delivered or the company will steal your money.
The web is saturated with people reporting frauds and undelivered goods, as well as failed refund requests. There is also plenty of reporting about accounts being banned by game companies for bot usage during power leveling, lost goods deleted by game masters and warnings for exploitation of the game economy.
In his study, Heeks (2008) moves toward an interesting conclusion, "the level of trading it's likely to be below that wich would occur if the various informational challenges were mitigated or removed". He mentions the case of Sony Station Exchange selling platinum directly to Everquest II players. Players were able to buy currency directly from the game company.
Sony is one of the biggest companies in the whole world, and no rational Everquest player would be scared about getting scammed by them. The system addressed most of the existing information failure, and leaded to a plus 78% of virtual currency purchases from players |
|