Understanding the users’ continuous adoption of 3D social virtual world in China: A comparative case study

•We explained how social virtual world (SVW) strategies impact long-term customer commitment.•We compared two major competitors’ long-term strategies and situations in Chinese SVW market.•There is a critical timeframe between short-term to long-term acceptance.•SVW should reduce learning cost in short-term, and enhance social networking functions in long-term.

Internet-based 3D social virtual world (SVW) is a special social media with 3D interface, open-ended, immersive, and collaborative nature, which has attracted interest among researchers and practitioners alike. This Chinese 3D SVW market developed for nearly 8 years, from 2005 to 2013. After the initiation stage (05–09), some new tendencies occurred in the maintenance stage (09–13). Some local SVWs (e.g., HiPiHi) held advantages in attracting users in the early stage but failed in the maintenance stage, but other companies (e.g., Uworld) attracted users’ continuous adoption and commitment in long-term competition. Based on customer commitment theory and diffusion of innovation theory, we established a theoretical framework to explain how virtual world strategies impact on short-term and long-term customer commitment. Based on qualitative data (e.g., longitude observation and third-party report), this research compares two major competitors’ strategies in Chinese virtual world market (i.e., HiPiHi and Uworld), and analyzes how their strategies succeeded or failed to attract users’ long-term commitment. The findings suggest there is a “S-curve” for adoption rate of SVW users, and there is a “critical timeframe” for persuading users’ continuous adoptions. Social virtual worlds should try to encourage users to reduce personalization and learning cost in the short-term, after which they can then change the “vicious circle” to “virtuous circle.”