Factors that influence Thai mobile gamers to spend money on a free-to-play mobile game

Mobile gaming market has been growing rapidly and is growing at the extremely high rate, especially in Asia and the United States. The reason of its growth is mainly because of technological advancement in the gaming industry and mobile phones. As the television and personal computer usage is lowering, it affects human lifestyles of how they use and consume products. People are now hardly use personal computers or televisions but are now using more of laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Hence, the gaming lifestyles of gamers has changed and shifted to mobile gaming. As the mobile gaming market is growing at rapid rate, mobile game companies try their best to understand the needs of mobile gamers. This study covers the area of mobile gaming in-game purchases and focuses on contemporary topics in applied marketing. The main research objectives are (1) to identify Thai mobile gamer profiles based on their demographic (2) to identify gamer segments by gaming behaviour based on gamer’s reason to play and time spent in the game (3) to identify their in-game purchasing motivation based on different purposes in game (4) to determine gamers’ in-game spending behaviour in the past based on purchasing purposes. This study allows the readers to better understand the reason of why and its underlying reason gamers spend their money in-game, and how the readers can grasp this business opportunity to craft a better marketing strategy based on the result of this study. Exploratory and descriptive methods was applied in this study. For the exploratory stage, secondary research and in-depth interview were conducted. The result gave a rough understanding of gamers’ behaviour and how might the researcher develop an effective survey questionnaire design in the later stage. In descriptive research stage, survey questionnaire was conducted with 298 samples. Only 220 passed the questionnaire criteria and left with an exact 200 qualified samples after the data cleansing stage. Convenience sampling method (non-probability) was used for data collection throughout the selected gaming communities online. The survey questionnaires are made to understand in-game purchasing behaviour of the gamers and its influential factors that made gamers pay in-game. The target population is gamers aged 15-45 years old who had made an in-game purchases in the past month. Statistical Package for the Social Science program was used to analyse the obtained data. The analysis includes frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, one-way ANOVA, bivariate correlation, and factor analysis. It was used to classify gamer segments based on their gaming purposes and demographic. The analysis illustrated that demographic gives little to no difference in gaming behaviour and attitude. The relationship between gaming purposes and gaming consumption were studied in this paper. Gaming purposes is then used to find its relevant correlation to purchasing motivations, willingness to pay, and in-game purchasing behaviour. All gamers had been asked with the same set of questions. This study provides how gaming purposes can greatly impact different gaming decision and behaviour. Marketers and executives in gaming company can use this study to further develop a marketing strategy that suits the needs of gamers by each segment and use it to further increase the sale revenue by meeting the latent needs of mobile gamers.