Emerald Management Review:
People are experience goods: improving online dating with virtual dates

Abstract:

Purpose - To introduce the Virtual Date, an intervention in which potential dating partners explore a virtual environment in an interaction analogous to a real first date, creating an online experience that offers an experiential preview of a real-world interaction.

Design/methodology/approach - Charts the general disappointment that online daters express with current online dating search mechanisms, documenting how search time fails to pay off in a commensurate number of face-to-face encounters. Asks young single people what qualities they consider most important when choosing someone to date and then uses an evolving enriched chat platform to create Virtual Dates.

Findings - Although online dating Web sites are highly successful in allowing people to connect with others outside their existing social circles, online information seeking can leave much to be desired when people are searching for romantic relationships. Demonstrates that people do not enjoy online dating as much as offline dating because the time and effort invested in searching is not rewarded with real-world payoffs, confirms that the qualities people desire most in a partner are qualities that are difficult to identify using an Internet search engine but must be experienced in an interaction and introduces an intervention designed to improve the online dating experience and simulating a first date. Finds that participants' reactions are more positive towards individuals whom they have Virtual Dated than towards those whose profiles they have seen and that these effects carry forward through an initial face-to-face meeting in a speed date.

Practical implications - Believes that crucial to designing successful virtual interfaces is careful consideration of the different goals of the many kinds of relationships online and the different kinds of information people value most highly or find most diagnostic when forming these different kinds of relationships.

Originality/value - Contends that understanding how romantic relationships are formed online can be informed by realizing that people are the ultimate experience good.

Keywords:

Article Type:

Research paper

Reference:

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