I Lost the Game so I Don’t Like the Brand

I Lost the Game so I Don’t Like the BrandDoes the Outcome of the Game Affect the Impact of In-game Advertising?

Gunnar Mau*, Günter Silberer# and Janin Gödecke #

*www.SHOPPERMETRICS.com # Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

• Media fragmentation and declining television advertising efficacy, has engendered interest in developing more effective ways to reach consumers

• Growth of importance of computer games• Higher sales have been generated by computer games

than by movies in the US

• Impressive number of players

• Computer games have been discovered for marketing purposes• Steady rise in the number of companies placing their brands, products or advertising

messages in computer games -> In-game advertising

Computer Games

ICORIA 2009, Klagenfurt

• In recent years several studies have been published on the• acceptance of in-game advertising and • impact on the recollection of brands

• Very little is known about the influence of game outcome on the effects of in-game advertising

• However, many computer games are based upon the principle of competition – making the outcome of the game a key element in them

What are the effects of game outcome on player’s mood, their attitude toward the placed brands as well as the game?

Computer Games as a Communication Tool


• If the influence of game outcome on the players is thematized, it is mostly its impact on the players’ mood.

• Successful players (winners) of a (non-computer) game experienced more pleasure than those who performed worse (Holbrook et al. 1984)

• Players with positive feedback exhibited significantly more positive mood scores than the control subjects, regardless of whether the win was attributed to luck or skill (Hill & Ward1989)

• The results were subsequently replicated several times, e.g. for lottery tickets (Ward et al. 1988) or sports sponsoring (Drengner 2008)

Effects of Game Outcome:Player’s Mood:


H1 If players finish a game as a winner (vs. loser), their mood improves (deteriorates) compared to before the

game

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• Results of some studies indicate that brands are perceived more positively through their placement in computer games.

• Influence of game outcome on the attitude toward the advertised brand has barely been investigated.

• Theoretical Models of Advertising Effects• Mood experienced during the game influences the attitude toward the advertised

brand as a peripheral cue (Petty and Cacioppo 1981)

• Affective appraisal of the computer game influences the attitude toward the brand advertised (MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch 1986)

H2 If players win the game (vs. lose), their attitude toward the advertised brand improves (deteriorates) compared to before the game.

Effects of Game Outcome:Attitude towards the Advertised Brand


• Playing a computer game can be regarded as a task, the successful accomplishment of which is associated with positive feelings (cf. H1).

• Ward et al. (1988) conclude from this that “winners are likely to feel better than losers, and have a better attitude toward the …the game itself, the odds of winning the game…”

H3 If players win a game, they have a better attitude toward the game than players who lose it.

Effects of Game Outcome :Attitude towards the Game


Design and Procedure

• Field experiment, test people (N = 63) came from a university campus under the pretense that they people were needed for a special computer game for a national benchmark test on hand-eye coordination

• Between subject design with the factor game outcome : winning vs. losing vs. control group• Winner condition: test people were told beforehand that the fastest time in which

someone of the same age, educational background and computer game experience had completed the course was 4:55 minutes + positive feedback on their performance were given at two fixed points during the game

• Losing condition: the fastest time was given as 1:55 minutes beforehand. There was negative feedback at the same points

• Motor racing game “Racing Simulation 2” was chosen for this study • Game setting was varied in such a way as to exclusively place advertising boards

for the brands Red Bull and Jägermeister along the course in equal proportions


Results: Players’ mood

• Mood of the winners improved after playing the game, whereas the losers felt worse• Results supports H1 (F (2, 42) = 18.03, p < .001, η2 = .462)


Results: Attitude towards the Advertised Brand

• Positive game outcome: the attitude toward the advertised brand improved whereas players with negative game outcome rated the brand worse afterwards (control group: no change) (Jägermeister F (2, 41) = 7.14, p = .002, η2 = .258; Red Bull F (2, 41) = 7.48, p = .002, η2 = .267)

• Results supports H2


Jägermeister Red Bull

Results: Attitude towards the Advertised Brand

• The attitude toward the brand not advertised, Volvic, did not change significantly subject to the outcome of the game (F (2, 41) < 1, p = .431).


Volvic

Results: Attitude towards the Game

Þ Winners rated the game as better than the losers and the control group (F (2, 41) = 3.91, p = .028, η2 = .160)

Þ Results supports H3


Conclusion

• The outcome of the game can have a significant impact on the players’ mood, and their attitude toward the advertised brand and the game itself

• Players with a negative game outcome are not only in a worse mood afterwards and rate the game as worse; they also rate the advertised brand more negatively than before the game. The winners display the opposite effects

• The fact that the effect of the game outcome on the appreciation of the brands is not merely an unspecific influence of the more negative mood on brand appreciation is clear from the result that only the advertised brands are actually rated as worse but not a brand that is not advertised

• It would be too easy to conclude from this that it is only worth advertising in games that are so easy that every player can win them. • The results of the flow theory, according to which the enjoyment of the game is greatest

when the demands of the game and the players’ ability are equal (Csikszentmihalyi and

Rathunde 1993), suggest rather that games that adjust their playing ability to suit the ability of the players are more interesting for brand advertising (Zentes and Schramm-Klein 2004).


Thank you!

Business

I Lost the Game so I Don’t Like the Brand