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Online Gamers' Consumer Behaviors: A Motivational Perspective. Fan-Chen Tseng, Department of Multimedia and M-Commerce, Kainan University tfckn01@mail.knu.edu.tw. Outline. Introduction Online Gamers’ Motives for Playing Online Games Factors underlying the motives for playing online games
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Online Gamers' Consumer Behaviors: A Motivational Perspective Fan-Chen Tseng, Department of Multimedia and M-Commerce, Kainan University tfckn01@mail.knu.edu.tw ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Outline • Introduction • Online Gamers’ Motives for Playing Online Games • Factors underlying the motives for playing online games • Theoretical implications • Segmenting online gamers based on their motives • Motives and Behavioral Responses to Marketing Offers • Managerial Implications • Conclusion and Future Research Directions ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Introduction (1) • Online games are prospering: stable growth rate in Taiwan since 2006, expected to continue • Many types of online games have evolved • Online gamers may have different motives for playing online games • Purpose of this study: investigating online gamers’ motives for playing online games and the influence of these motives on their usage behaviors in online games ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Introduction (2) • Hypothesis 1 • Online gamers with different motives show differences in: age, gender, education, occupation • Hypothesis 2 • Online gamers with different motives show differences in: • Status of playing online games • Preferred types of online games • Amounts of money willing to spend monthly • Willingness to purchase or bid for virtual assets ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Online Gamers’ Motives for Playing Online Games (1) • Two factors underlying the motives for playing online games • The need for exploration: • challenging the extremes of the games, exploring new frontiers in the games, seeking new friendship in the games, …. • The need for conquering: • killing the characters of other gamers, winning over other gamers, … ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Online Gamers’ Motives for Playing Online Games (2) • Theoretical implications • The need for exploration: • the presence ofOptimum Stimulation Level (OSL) • When the stimuli from the environment fall under an individual’s OSL, he/she will be satiated and this satiation results in a higher intrapersonal drive for novelty, complexity, variety, or change ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Online Gamers’ Motives for Playing Online Games (3) • Theoretical implications • The need for conquering: • Murry’s (1938) proposed 28 Psychogenic Needs • the need for aggression: the need to assault or injury an object. Or to murder, belittle, harm, punish, or ridicule a person. • In the virtual world of online games, gamers can easily satisfy this kind of need through virtual characters. ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Online Gamers’ Motives for Playing Online Games (4) Segmenting online gamers based on their motives Hypothesis testing for H1: significant differences exist in gender and occupation, but not in age and education ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Motives and Behavioral Responses to Marketing Offers (1) • Status of playing online games: ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Motives and Behavioral Responses to Marketing Offers (2) • Preferred types of online games : ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Motives and Behavioral Responses to Marketing Offers (3) • Amounts of money willing to spend monthly: ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Motives and Behavioral Responses to Marketing Offers (4) • Willingness to purchase virtual assets : ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Motives and Behavioral Responses to Marketing Offers (5) • Willingness to bid for virtual assets : ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Managerial Implications • For aggressive gamers: promoting functional virtual assets to enhance the power of gamers’ characters • For social gamers: promoting non-functional virtual assets, which are used for enhancing the appearances or personalities to enhance interactions in the game. • For inactive gamers: research must be conducted to understand why some gamers become inactive—for detecting defecting gamers and winning them back ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng
Conclusion • Discovered two factors underlying gamers’ motives: the need for exploration and the need for conquering • Online gamers can be categorized as aggressive gamers, social gamers, and inactive gamers, based on these two factors. • These three groups of gamers showed significant differences in their behavioral characteristics in online games. • Future studies on consumer behavior in online games can extend the present study by integrating customer personalities and motives in their models. ECDL 2009 Fan-Chen Tseng