Since Mark Zuckerberg announced in September 2021 the change of Facebook’s name to Meta and presented his vision of the Metaverse, there has been no end to speculation in the marketing world about its impact and brands have been announcing their reactions in the media. The perception of the impact as a disruption in the customer-company relationship makes companies want to be present in the race to be pioneers in this new virtual reality.

Although gamification has been a marketing technique of recurrent use in the 21st century, it has been somewhat relegated to the advertising field in the gaming industry. However, the Metaverse is presented as a holistic view of life, where through his or her avatar, the protagonist consumer discovers new needs in a virtual and parallel world modelled on his or her whim.

This means that the Metaverse is much more than an incubator of marketing ideas for brands. The conception of a new universe is a world of speculation where states, countries and communities are for sale, cities are to be built and where, in Zuckerberg’s vision, society will be able to invent, build or reproduce its reality. That is, to relate, buy and work, in short, to live.

As in any technological paradigm, companies are facing a new transformation. Without concluding the change of Customer Centricity, 100% digital customer and with the imminent reality of 5G and IoT, the Metaverse is another reality that implies for companies the conception of the customer under multiple personalities, as many as metaverses, new products, channel integration, new currencies, new legislations, new and multiple sources of decentralized data, etc.

This new scenario requires urgent research, which, although brands can face with more or less difficulty, in the field of research is complex given that the advances and incursions of companies are still incipient and there is no data on social and consumer behaviour in the Metaverse. For this reason, this article aims to be a holistic compilation of what the metaverse is, its background and consequences on behaviour in the purchase decision process. Its conclusions will allow us to delimit specific areas of research on consumer behaviour patterns in this new virtual reality.