Customization, immersion satisfaction, and online gamer loyalty
Introduction
Online games are an important emerging part of the entertainment industry, as evidenced by revenues that are forecasted to increase from US$3.4 billion in 2005 to over US$13 billion in 2011 (DFC Intelligence, 2006). This significant growth reflects the value of online gaming for research. Moreover, in online environments, competing games are merely a click away, and user loyalty represents a competitive advantage in retaining customers (Reichheld & Schefter, 2000), highlighting the relevance of gamer loyalty-related research.
Gamers have distinct personalities and motivations for playing online games (Jeng and Teng, 2008, Teng, 2008). Customization can help satisfy the needs of gamers who have distinct motivations by accommodating their unique user preferences. Customization enables gamers to create, select, and change their avatars to make the game play experience more enjoyable (Bailey, Wise, & Bolls, 2009). It also increases the feeling of presence and enjoyment (Bailey et al., 2009, Barr et al., 2006). However, whether customization can increase gamer loyalty, i.e., a gamer’s intention to play a certain online game repetitively, remains unknown. User loyalty is vital to the competitiveness of computer applications (Reichheld & Schefter, 2000), warranting an investigation of how customization and gamer loyalty are related.
In online gaming contexts, Bailey et al. (2009) identified avatar customizability as essential to customization. Moreover, given that avatars are gamer representations in game worlds, this study focuses on avatars in studying customization. Customized avatars instill in gamers a feeling of presence or immersion in the game (Bailey et al., 2009). In other words, gamers can connect their physical body, virtual body (avatar), and body schema (Biocca, 1997). A psychological theory has posited that immersion is related to certain gamer needs, including those for exploration, role-play, escapism, and fantasy (Yee, 2006). Satisfaction of such needs represents a major reason for online game play (Yee, 2006), indicating the relevance of satisfying immersion-related needs. This study thus devises the construct immersion satisfaction to denote the extent to which immersion-related needs are satisfied.
Online gaming researchers are concerned with how customization (the extent to which individual user preferences are accommodated), immersion satisfaction (the extent to which immersion-related needs are satisfied), and gamer loyalty (gamer intention to play a certain online game repetitively) are related. Elucidating such relationships can help game providers enhance gamer loyalty. If immersion satisfaction fully mediates the effect of customization on gamer loyalty, loyalty cannot be improved without increasing immersion satisfaction, indicating that (full mediation) immersion satisfaction may be more important than customization in this case. However, immersion satisfaction and customization may be equally important to game providers if both customization and immersion satisfaction impact gamer loyalty independently. Thus, exactly how customization, immersion satisfaction, and gamer loyalty are related is of primary concern in online gaming contexts.
This study investigates how customization, immersion satisfaction, and gamer loyalty are related. It is unique in the customization literature in linking customization to immersion satisfaction and user loyalty.
The extent of customization’s impact on gamer loyalty may not be intuitive. Customization may comply with gamer preferences. However, complying with gamer preferences may not always increase gamer loyalty, warranting the need to investigate how customization impacts gamer loyalty.
Moreover, the extent to which customization impacts immersion satisfaction also warrants further study because such an impact is based on the assertion that individuals strongly identify with their customized in-game representations, i.e., avatars. Such an assertion complicates the extent to which customization impacts immersion satisfaction, warranting further study.
The relationships among these constructs are tested rigorously by comparing the following three models: the proposed model (Fig. 1(a)), which posits that immersion satisfaction partially mediates the influence of customization on gamer loyalty; the first competing model (Fig. 1(b)), in which immersion satisfaction fully mediates the influence of customization on gamer loyalty; and the second competing model (Fig. 1(c)), in which customization and immersion satisfaction are independent explanatory variables for gamer loyalty. Fig. 1 compares the proposed model with the two competing models.
Section snippets
Gamer loyalty
Loyalty has been categorized as both behavioral and attitudinal (Russell-Bennett, McColl-Kennedy, & Coote, 2007). Intuitively, behavioral loyalty should be important owing to its reflection in the behavior of repeated purchases. Some studies have questioned the significance of behavioral loyalty (or actual usage) as repeated purchases may be attributed to a lack of alternatives rather than loyalty (Chandrashekaran, Rotte, Tax, & Grewal, 2007). Attitudinal loyalty refers to the tendency to
Research hypothesis
User representations, i.e., avatars, are surrogate personas in the virtual world (e.g., online game world) that make users feel present or immersed in the virtual world (Dede, 1995, Witmer and Singer, 1998). When users create, select, and change, i.e., customize, their representations based on their preferences or ideal selves, the human tendency to avoid cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) induces them to strongly identify with their customized representations. In other words, users
Methods
This cross-sectional study posted invitations on popular game websites and web forums to solicit online gamers to complete an online survey questionnaire. The websites on which the invitation was posted include www.gamer.com.tw/, tw.games.yahoo.com/allgame.html, wowbox.tw/bbs/index.php, www.glog.cc/index.asp, www.twbbs.tw/, and 18 other websites. The websites and web forums were selected because of their popularity among players of various online games, increasing the representativeness of this
Analysis
Validity of the proposed model was analyzed in two stages. The proposed model was compared with two competing models to examine specification adequacy. Validity of the proposed model given the impact of control variables was then examined by adding several control variables. While demonstrating the validity of the proposed model, analytical results indicated that the effects of the control variables on the proposed relationships were insignificant.
Discussion
This study is, to my knowledge, the first to correlate customization, immersion satisfaction, and gamer loyalty. The analytical results further demonstrate that both customization and immersion satisfaction predict gamer loyalty, contributing to efforts to enhance gamer loyalty by means of avatar and game designs.
Research limitations and future research directions
This study attempts to avoid temporal validity problems such as user maturity and technological progress by adopting a survey method, which also enabled analysis by the structural equation modeling method. However, an experimental design provides enhanced power for studying causality. This study recommends that future studies should design experiments to further confirm the relationships identified here. Additionally, future studies can further classify customization into user-driven or
Acknowledgments
The author thanks anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments and Chang Gung University for financial support (UARPD370031).
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