The influences of psychological sense of brand community on mobile game loyalty: a case study research
Duong, Kim (2017)
Duong, Kim
Yrkeshögskolan Arcada
2017
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 Finland
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201705219223
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201705219223
Tiivistelmä
This thesis contributes to Carlson et al.’s (2008) findings on a brand-based community and its psychological aspects. The research aimed to investigate the influences of psychological sense of brand community (PSBC) on mobile game loyalty. Particularly, it attempted to, first, look at sense of brand community from the social identity viewpoint, and second, explore the influence of PSBC on game loyalty as well as the role PSBC plays in the satisfaction–loyalty relationship. The relevant studies from journals, books and internet sources were reviewed to form the theoretical framework and develop the hypotheses. A web-survey for mobile game players was conducted during 1 week in October 2016 with 192 usable responses collected. Each participant was asked to answer 15 questions on the Likert-scales to measure PSBC, game satisfaction and game loyalty. The measurements were adapted from previous related studies. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the hypothesized relationships. The analysis was conducted in R environment, using mainly package ‘lavaan’. The findings showed that PSBC directly contributes to players’ loyalty regardless of the presence of their social interaction with one another. Mobile game satisfaction is still a more critical factor influencing loyalty, although PSBC is found to positively mediate the effect of game satisfaction on loyalty. The results also revealed that mobile game players care about the services provided by the gaming vendor, the ability the vendor handles opportunistic gaming behavior, and the account administration. To conclude this thesis, several recommendations for future PSBC-interest studies were given.