Online communities of payments and consumer behaviour

This paper asserts that the online communities of electronic money (e-money) users affect the traditional mechanisms of price determination by introducing anonymity in money payments. By studying the Second Life case it is possible to show the main characteristics of such a communities and raise new questions linked to the online behaviours of the consumers. In the aim of shedding light on the online consumer behaviour we turn to Thorstein Veblen works and to network externalities concepts.