Impact of eWOM on Video Games

This report investigates the impact of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on consumer purchasing decisions in the video game industry. It analyzes the concept of eWOM, its influence on video game awareness and sales, and how it shapes consumer attitudes and behaviors. The report also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative research methods, ultimately choosing quantitative research for its reliability and objectivity.

Impact Of Ewom On The
Video Game: Effect On
Consumer Purchasing
Decision

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
AIM:.................................................................................................................................................1
OBJECTIVES .................................................................................................................................1
RATIONAL ....................................................................................................................................1
LITERATURE REVIEW ...............................................................................................................2
Concept of eWOM. ....................................................................................................................2
Impact of eWOM in the video game..........................................................................................3
The influence of eWOM on consumer purchasing decision.......................................................3
METHODOLOGY .........................................................................................................................4
Advantages and disadvantages of qualitative research ..............................................................4
Advantages and disadvantages of quantitative research ............................................................4
Reason behind selecting quantitative research ...........................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
.........................................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
eWOM stands for electronic Word of Mouth which is a kind of buzz marketing. It can
become critical if the message or information is addressed appropriately or funny enough to
attract attention of large number of customers. In eWOM, a business is emphasis on person-to-
person contract or bidding that happen over the internet. It has become one of the most essential
parts when it comes to digital and physical channels. With the technology advancement, eWOM
is most influential factors in regards to users and their communication regarding certain service
or product. In fact when an individual encounter something unique the first thing or occurrence
on video game to do it to communicate it with family, friends and many other people. It is also
play an effective role in consumer purchasing power (Al Mana and Mirza, 2013). It is an
effective type of marketing and in which people like to share, seek advice online and trust other
people. Therefore eWOM is essential for organisation to attract many other people to buy
products or services. Electronic word of mouth is one of the major factor in the video game
which highly effects on consumer's purchasing decision. Around 41% of video gamers believe
on electronic word-of-mouth to obtain relevant information and data on games (Word-of-Mouth
Key for Video Game, 2019). More than 3 in 10 learned regarding video games by playing them
in an individual at a friend, relative’s home and many other people. Promotion in magazines and
online, along with coupons and social networking sites, were not as influential.
AIM:
“To analysis the impact of eWOM on the video game that can affect the consumer
purchasing decision”
OBJECTIVES
 To understand the concept of eWom.
 To explore the impact of eWom in the video game.
 To identify the influence of eWom on consumer purchasing decision.
RATIONAL
Main reason behind selecting this topic is to explore the impact of electronic word-of-
mouth mouth on video game and also its effects on consumer's decision making (Cheung and
Lee, 2012). It is introduce to word-of-mouth over the internet where large number of customer
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interact together and communicate their opinion or views regarding the services and products. It
takes place via different models such as social networking sites, blogs, e-mail, websites etc.
eWOM is identified one of the reliable and valuable source of data and this has a highly
influence on buying behaviour and attitude of customers. It is also essential for researcher
because with the help of this topic or study they can easily enhance their literature review skills,
data analysis and collection skills as well as also develop presentation skills.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature review discusses and evaluate published information or data in a specific
subject area. In addition, it is introducing to a comprehensive summary of past studies made by
some another person on related topic. This section of research mainly includes books, scholarly
articles and many other relevant sources in order to gather in-depth information about the topic
or field of study. Main purpose of literature review section in research is to identify inconstancies
like gaps as well as conflicts in previous research (Cheung and Thadani, 2012). In this part of
research, each objectives of study are address in more systematic and effective manner. Along
with this, objectives of research and opinion of authors about this are defined as under:
Concept of eWOM.
According to the Lopez and Sicilia, (2014), eWOM plays an essential role with detail to
sources of data and at the same period is more credible, persuasive and trusted than commercial
information over the internet. It is an influential tool and due to this people sharing information
on social media have become successful. Electronic word-of-mouth is a type of communication
and essential concepts in the area of marketing and branding communications. It is mainly linked
to the group of marketing that covers viral marketing, social media marketing etc. It is also
includes consumer and user generated content or message available through the internet. It is a
best type of buzz marketing which effects on video game and also on consumers decision
making pattern. eWOM applies the internet so message is passed on a images, written text or
even movies. Electronic word-of-mouth can reach a different number of person at the same
period of time so it has a best potential of becoming critical. On video game, people like to share
their opinion, views etc. about the specific subject. In addition, people trust the opinion and view
of a actual person more than they believe advertising and information on corporate website.
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Impact of eWOM in the video game.
According to Mike Fahey, (2019), Video game firm might rethink their budgets of
marketing when they see the outputs, which show that friends are 3 times as likely to effects a
game buy than traditional advertising. In the video game, electronic word-of-mouth play
important role by sending message to another person. Thus, with the help of this, an individual
can easily share their opinion or views about the products or services within an organisation.
There is positive as well as negative impact of eHOW on video games as it increase game
awareness in the market due to which number of users also increases to a certain level.
For instance, if any existing user of game has posted any interesting fact about the games
they are playing, or they are sharing their scores on different social media platforms then more
people would be aware about the product resulting in increase in users (Yoo, Kim and Sanders,
2015). On the other hand, if any individual posted some negative reviews regarding the game
then the other person who is new in this field wont download it as unfavourable image has been
created in the mind of customer.
The influence of eWOM on consumer purchasing decision
According to Cheung and Lee, (2012), eWOM (word of mouth) plays a vital role in
customer's purchasing techniques or ways or patterns. Though internet provides a open platform
to share ideas on a global platform about any product or services. The initiation of the internet
has extended customer's ideas or thoughts to acquire impartial information about a particular
product of the company. It also suggests customer's to share their own advice for engaging in
electronic word-of-mouth. The distinguish attire or characteristics of internet communication
are unidentified, available to other consumers for a infinite time period , directed to aggregate
individuals. Strong attention and awareness should be given to the eWOM marketing researchers
and managers. The information expressed on the Web-based consumer opinions expected to put
forward a strong impact on customer's. Unlike news groups, web based thoughts are relatively
easy to operate and require less internet related knowledge to gather information. Here, the
DVDs, and web based customer's opinion provides more relevant informations about the product
and include almost all area of consumption. It mainly focus on person-to-person contacts that are
created on internet. As eWOM (Electronic Word of Mouth) is very strong and powerful as it
reaches to huge people and the information can be monitored on internet at any time. EWOM is a
modern marketing method,as compared to the traditional marketing tools it can spread at
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precedented speeding at very cheap costs. The effectiveness of eWOM has raised up due to
upliftment of social media. Internet is offering a new strong floor for eWOM marketing.
METHODOLOGY
Methodology is more essential part for researcher to collect accurate and relevant amount
of data about the topic. In addition, it is the theoretical and systematic analysis of the methods
used to a field of study (Jalilvand and Samiei, 2012). There are mainly two types of research
methods such as qualitative and quantitative which is followed by researcher to accumulate in-
depth and proper information related to the topic. Along with this advantages and disadvantages
of both types of research methods and reason for selection of qualitative research are explained
as under:
Advantages and disadvantages of qualitative research
Qualitative research: It is introduced as a primary exploratory research which is used by
researcher for gaining understanding about underlying opinion and reasons (Jalilvand and et. al.,
2012). This research gives an insight into issue which can be further applied to create better ideas
for potential quantitative research. There are certain methods followed for this data collection is
group discussion, interview, questionnaire etc.
Advantages of qualitative research:
 Research frameworks can be flowing and based on available or incoming data.
 Data related to the qualitative research is based on human observations and experiences.
 Complexities of qualitative data can be incorporated into generated conclusions. Qualitative researcher is an effective and open-ended process.
Disadvantages of qualitative research:
 The quality of the data collected in qualitative research is extremely subjective.
 Data rigidity is not easy for researcher to assess and demonstrate.
 Data created via qualitative research is not always accepted.
 Data gathered in qualitative research is not statistically representative.
Advantages and disadvantages of quantitative research
Quantitative Research: It introduce to a method of research which emphasis over
quantifying the issue by gathering numerical data or information over specific issue so that it can
be changed into useful statistics (Jin and Phua, 2014). It is mainly applied to present the quantify
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attitude, behaviours and opinion which is gathered from large number of population. For
collecting quantitative data, there are different methods such as mobile survey, paper survey,
questionnaire etc. are used by researcher.
Advantages of quantitative research:
 Quantitative research design is an fabulous way of finalizing outputs and giving or
disproving a hypothesis.
 Quantitative experiments are useful and valuable for testing the outputs gained by a way
of qualitative experiments, leading to a final answer (Tham, Croy and Mair, 2013). Questionnaire is identify one of the popular and useful instruments for the quantitative
research.
Disadvantages of quantitative research:
 One of the main disadvantage of quantitative research is the context of the study and
experiment is ignored.
 In quantitative research, large sample of population must be designed foe more accurate
outputs.
 Lack of resource for data collection is another major limitation or disadvantage of
quantitative research.
Reason behind selecting quantitative research
Qualitative and quantitative both are the type of research used by researcher for
collecting accurate information about the study (Reza Jalilvand and Samiei, 2012). According to
the research or topic, quantitative research is used because it help a researcher by providing in-
depth and detail information about the topic as compare to qualitative research. There are some
important reasons for selecting quantitative research which are defined as below:
 Quantitative research is more reliable and objective as compare to qualitative research.
 It can apply statistics to generalise a finding.
 It often decrease or restructures a complex issue to a sufficient number of variables.
 Quantitative research looks at an effective relationship between variables and can set up
cause and effect in extremely controlled circumstances (See-To and Ho, 2014).
 Questionnaire is one of the best method which is used by researcher to collect reliable
and valid data about the study, it is also a biggest reason for selecting quantitative
research.
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CONCLUSION
From the above mentioned information, it has been concluded that eWOM is essential
marketing tool used by people to share their views to another person. Electronic word-of-mouth
is highly impact on video games that further influenced on decision making power and pattern of
consumers. In order to identifying information about the topic, quantitative research was used
which will more suitable for carrying out research in more systematic and effective manner.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Al Mana, A. M. and Mirza, A. A., 2013. The impact of electronic word of mouth on consumers'
purchasing decisions. International Journal of Computer Applications. 82(9).
Cheung, C. M. and Lee, M. K., 2012. What drives consumers to spread electronic word of mouth
in online consumer-opinion platforms. Decision support systems. 53(1). pp.218-225.
Cheung, C. M. and Thadani, D. R., 2012. The impact of electronic word-of-mouth
communication: A literature analysis and integrative model. Decision support
systems. 54(1). pp.461-470.
Jalilvand, M. R. and Samiei, N., 2012. The impact of electronic word of mouth on a tourism
destination choice: Testing the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Internet Research:
Electronic Networking Applications and Policy, 22(5), pp.591-612.
Jalilvand, M. R. and et. al., 2012. Examining the structural relationships of electronic word of
mouth, destination image, tourist attitude toward destination and travel intention: An
integrated approach. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 1(1-2), pp.134-
143.
Jin, S. A. A. and Phua, J., 2014. Following celebrities’ tweets about brands: The impact of
twitter-based electronic word-of-mouth on consumers’ source credibility perception,
buying intention, and social identification with celebrities. Journal of
Advertising. 43(2). pp.181-195.
Reza Jalilvand, M. and Samiei, N., 2012. The effect of electronic word of mouth on brand image
and purchase intention: An empirical study in the automobile industry in
Iran. Marketing Intelligence & Planning. 30(4). pp.460-476.
See-To, E.W. and Ho, K.K., 2014. Value co-creation and purchase intention in social network
sites: The role of electronic Word-of-Mouth and trust–A theoretical analysis. Computers
in Human Behavior. 31. pp.182-189.
Tham, A., Croy, G. and Mair, J., 2013. Social media in destination choice: Distinctive electronic
word-of-mouth dimensions. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing. 30(1-2). pp.144-
155.
Yoo, C. W., Kim, Y. J. and Sanders, G. L., 2015. The impact of interactivity of electronic word
of mouth systems and E-Quality on decision support in the context of the e-
marketplace. Information & Management. 52(4). pp.496-505.
Online
Mike Fahey, 2019. Word-of-Mouth Key for Video Game. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Word-of-Mouth-Key-Video-Game-Industry/
1007287>.
Lopez and Sicilia. 2014. Electronic Word-of-Mouth. [Online]. Available through:
<http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/plablog/2016/04/18/electronic-word-of-mouth-ewom-
marketing/>.
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