While Facilitating Presence for Marketing Purposes, Are you Persuading or Seducing your Consumers? Anne-Cécile Jeandrain ING Chair Coordinator, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium Research assistant, UCL School of Management, Belgium Rita Lauria Associate Professor, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, U.S.A. Research Associate, Media Interface & Network Design Labs, U.S.A. Paper accepted to The 6th Annual International Workshop on Presence, Aalborg University, Denmark, October 2003 1. Introduction The capability of new technologies to create media transparency points to a revolution in social communications that involves a fundamental reshaping of the way that people understand the world about them (Pontifical Council, 2002) and to the ethical question of whether facilitating immersion contributes to authentic human development. While new media are powerful tools that can enhance human lives by being used for educational and cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, and intercultural dialogue, these communication media also can be used to exploit, to manipulate, and to dominate. In the particular field of commercial activity, presence is likely to provide companies a very useful tool to encourage whole new genres of experience, which is crucial for creating competitive advantages in the “experience economy” (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). “The degree to which a company is able to deliver a desirable customer experience - and to use information technology, brands, and integrated communications and entertainment to do so - will largely determine its success in the global marketplace of the new millennium” (Schmitt, 1999, p. 24). Consumers want experience that dazzles their senses, touches their hearts, and stimulates their minds (Schmitt, 1999). In doing so, companies will stage an experience that engages customers and then connects these two parties in a personal, memorable way. For instance, the consumer in doing her/his shopping in a quasi 3D virtual store can have a welcome respite from real life, an escape form the humdrum routine and the harried rush (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). If one recognizes substantial – psychological and physiological – benefits for consumers of being present (e.g., enhanced product learning, Li et al., 2001, 2002; increased enjoyment, Heeter, 1992; higher level of arousal, Dillon et al., 2001), others could argue that in exchange for these benefits a greater “psychic cost” exists. In essence, the consumer exchanges her/his presence in reality for the illusion of non-mediation (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). This can raise important ethical issues. More precisely, if marketing is defined as “a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and services of value with others” (Kotler, 1999, p. 7), we can raise questions regarding the creation of value for consumers and their freedom of choice when being immersed in virtual reality. These topics have been investigated in a previous research (see Lauria & Jeandrain, 2003). Its results obtained through a focus group analysis demonstrated that people are not likely to bypass the experiential aspect of immersion with – what they consider as – its main pernicious consequences, i.e. the possible lost of autonomy. Most of the focus group participants estimate that this lost is imputable to the individual as well to the company-owner of the immersive virtual store. Briefly, the consumer who freely chooses to navigate through presence-oriented web sites, is considered as responsible for her/his acts. On the other hand, the company, having decided to use this media capability, is accountable and must adopt