Loyalty of Gamers

: How does over-promising, underdelivering or not meeting consumer expectations in a video game product influence the consumers loyalty towards the brand

Abstract

The gaming community consists of billions active users who all share the same interest. Due to this massive community, thoughts about games and new releases are constantly discussed. Furthermore, the gaming industry is a relatively new industry that is growing rapidly. Therefore, this area is somewhat unexplored and worthy of analysis. The purpose of this thesis is to further understand how over-promising, under-delivering or not meeting consumers expectations influences consumers loyalty towards a brand in the gaming industry. The development of the conceptual framework was inspired by previous research regarding, hype, consumer expectation, consumer journey, over-promising, under-delivering, brand personality and brand loyalty.
The study used an explorative study with an abductive approach since the purpose of this study aims to explore. The data was collected through content analysis of gaming forums and interviews. The findings contribute with new insight about the concept of brand loyalty within the gaming industry. Namely the study found that brand behavior will not be drastically influenced by not meeting consumer expectations in the gaming industry, however brand attitude will be influenced. Furthermore, it was also found that brand personality can work independently of consumer expectations and that the consumer journey can be of use in managing consumer expectations. The main limitations of the study were that the forum analysis made use of a lot of interpretation and
assumptions, as these cannot be controlled to the same extent as an interview. Future research could consider to further investigate the “culprit” when a game is unsuccessfully launched. Moreover, further research could explore if there are cultural nuances within the gaming industry that alter consumer opinions.

Date of Award	2021-Jun
Original language	English
Supervisor	Felix Terman (Supervisor), Oskar Christensson (Supervisor) & Heléne Tjärnemo (Examiner)