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Social Network Analysis and Mining

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01-12-2021 | Original Article

Exploring the marketing strategy for the promotion of a new mobile game: love and producer on sina weibo

Authors: Xin Wang, Guang Yu, Yongtian Yu

Published in: Social Network Analysis and Mining | Issue 1/2021

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Abstract

With the emerging of Internet technology, the digital game industry is booming. Successful promotion is a requirement for new games to gain an important position in market competition. Some marketing literature emphasizes that event marketing constitutes an effective way to promote new products, and key opinion leaders (KOLs) and user-generated contents (UGCs) play an important role in game adoption. However, there are no relevant studies to explore event marketing, KOLs, and UGCs’ role and influence in the different stages of the process of new game promotion. Thus, using text mining and social network analysis methods, this study collected 698,965 postings on Sina Weibo to analyze the information diffusion trends and the effect of UGCs, marketing events, and KOLs at different promotion stages. Our results show that the new game promotion experienced a rapid outbreak and finally entered a declining diffusion trend. Critical events driven by popular festivals played an important role in the promotion process. Comic and game KOLs have higher influence, and marketing KOLs must cooperate with these KOLs to achieve better diffusion effects. In addition, head KOLs play a major role in information dissemination, especially in the first stage; however, when the information increases rapidly, ordinary users and tail KOLs also increase rapidly. The development of UGCs also reflects the diffusion trend of new game promotion. Based on these results, this study suggests countermeasures and suggestions for game design and marketing promotion for new game promotion.

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Title: Exploring the marketing strategy for the promotion of a new mobile game: love and producer on sina weibo
Authors: Xin Wang
Guang Yu
Yongtian Yu
Publication date: 01-12-2021
Publisher: Springer Vienna
Published in: Social Network Analysis and Mining / Issue 1/2021
Print ISSN: 1869-5450
Electronic ISSN: 1869-5469
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-021-00831-2

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