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Meme
Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. As conceived by Dawkins, a meme is a unit of cultural meaning, such as an idea or a value, that is passed from one generation to another. Lauren Ancel Meyers, a biology professor at the University of Texas, provides another understanding, which is that "memes spread through online social networks similarly to the way diseases do through offline populations". This dispersion of cultural movements is shown through the spread of memes online, especially when seemingly innocuous or trivial trends spread and die in rapid fashion.

Viral
"Viral" pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. Another rendition of the term includes Douglas Rushkoff's coined term "media virus" or "viral media" defining it as a type of Trojan horse: "People are duped into passing a hidden agenda while circulating compelling content."

Digital marketing
Virtual reality's growing market presents an opportunity and an alternative channel for digital marketing. The International Data Corporation expects spending to increase for augmented and virtual reality; forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 198% in 2015–2020, reaching $143.3 billion in the final year. It is also estimated that global spending on digital advertisements will increase to $335.5 billion by 2020. However, it is encouraged that utilising technology as a marketing tool should be based on its potential results rather than its number of users.

Consumers learning product details
Consumers can learn in detail about products through VR. It can present high definition, three-dimensional images and interactivity with a product, increasing its telepresence. Its marketing benefits are observed by Suh and Lee through their laboratory experiments: with a VR interface, participants' product knowledge and product attitude had noticeably increased. This includes higher intentions to purchase the product; however, these benefits were not compared to the costs of VR. According to Deflorian, VR can engage consumers' emotions and highlight the importance of empathy for conversions, "The point at which a recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action." He considers the potential return on investment (ROI) accounts for the comparatively high production price and expects associated costs to decline eventually.

Suh and Lee also found that a product's type moderates the effects of VR on consumer knowledge. Virtually high experiential (VHE) products have salient attributes that are primarily sensed through hearing and vision while virtually low experiential (VLE) products are not. VR does not benefit VLE products compared to VHE products because their distinctive properties cannot be adequately reflected. In addition, the design of a VR advertisement is an important consideration as it can affect brand equity. Without a feature for consumers to prevent VR advertisements, they may consider them invasive and react negatively. In this method, it is considered interruption marketing. Consumers want information to be presented in a format where they can observe its relevance before investing their time. Organisations are able to make interaction with their VR campaign optional. For example, UNICEF requires the user to download a mobile app before experiencing their VR campaign.

In 2015, a study revealed 75% of Forbes' World Most Valuable Brands had developed a VR or AR experience. Although VR is not as widespread among consumers compared to other forms of digital media, companies have increased their use of VR in recent years.

Engaging target audience
VR has allowed organizations to engage their target audience through a variety of methods. Non-profit organizations have used VR to bring potential supporters closer to distant social, political and environmental issues in immersive ways not possible with traditional media. Examples include: *Panoramic 360 views of the conflict in Syria and face-to-face encounters with CGI tigers in Nepal have been used in experiential activation and shared online for educational and fundraising purposes.
 * Retailers developed systems which allow their products to be seen in VR to provide consumers with a clearer idea of how the product will look and fit in their home without entering a physical store. Consumers looking at digital photos of the products can "turn" each product around virtually to view it from the side or back.
 * Companies have developed software or services to allow architectural design firms and real estate clients to tour virtual models of proposed buildings. During the design process, architects can use VR to experience their developing designs so as to provide the correct sense of scale and proportion.
 * VR models can replace physical miniatures to demonstrate a design to clients or the public. In addition, developers and owners can create VR models of built spaces, allowing potential buyers or tenants to tour them in VR. This is particularly beneficial when real-life circumstances make a physical tour unfeasible.

Social science and psychology
Virtual reality offers social scientists and psychologists a cost-effective tool to study and replicate interactions in a controlled environment. It enables a new form of perspective-taking by allowing an individual to embody a virtual avatar. Research in this area suggests that embodying another being presents a very different experience from solely imagining one's self in a digital form. Researchers have used the immersion of virtual reality to investigate how digital stimuli can alter human perception, emotion and physiological state, and how it has transformed social interaction, in addition to studying how digital interaction can enact social change in the physical world.

Altering perception, emotion and physiological states
Studies have considered how the form we take in virtual reality can affect our perception and actions. One study suggests that embodying the body of a young child can influence perception of object sizes such that objects are perceived as being much larger than if the objects were perceived by an individual embodying an adult body. Similarly, another study has found that Caucasian individuals who embodied the form of a dark-skinned avatar performed a drumming task with a more varied style than when they were represented by a pair of white-shaded hands and in comparison to individuals who embodied a light-skin avatar. As a whole, these works suggest that immersive virtual reality can create body-transfer illusions capable of influencing how humans respond to different circumstances.

Research exploring perception, emotions and physiological responses within virtual reality suggest that controlled virtual environments can alter how a person feels or responds to stimuli. For example, a controlled virtual environment of a park coupled with a strong perceived feeling of presence causes an individual to feel anxious or relaxed. Similarly, simulated driving through areas of darkness in a virtual tunnel can induce fear. Social interaction with virtual characters in a virtual environment has also been shown to produce physiological responses such as changes in heart rate and galvanic skin responses. In fact, individuals with high levels of social anxiety were found to have larger changes in heart rate than their more socially confident counterparts.

The sense of presence in virtual reality is also linked to the triggering of emotional and physiological responses. Research suggests that a strong presence can facilitate an emotional response, and this emotional response can further increase one's feeling of presence. Similarly, breaks in presence (or a loss in the sense of presence) can cause physiological changes.

Understanding biases and stereotypes
Researchers have utilized embodied perspective-taking in virtual reality to evaluate whether changing a person's self-representation may help in reducing bias against particular social groups. However, the nature of the relationship between embodiment and implicit bias is not yet clear as studies have demonstrated contrasting effects. Individuals who embodied the avatars of old people have demonstrated a significant reduction in negative stereotyping of the elderly when compared with individuals placed in avatars of young people. Similarly, light-skinned individuals placed in avatars with a dark body have shown a reduction in their implicit racial bias. However, other research has shown individuals taking the form of a Black avatar had higher levels of implicit racial bias favoring Whites after leaving the virtual environment than individuals who were embodied as White avatars.