DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION : A STUDY OF HOW MOBILE PHONE GAMES PROPAGATE.

Abstract

Mobile phone game industry is growing at a fast rate; this was due to the part of the explosive growth of smartphone usage around the world and the low barrier of entry for the game developers to publish their games. There are around 200,000 games on the App Store in 2014 and this is expected to rise in the future, however a smartphone user on average only install around 41 apps on their phone. With so much competition vying for the limited attention of the smartphone user, one must ask: what influence a user to choose a game over the others? Hence, this study was conducted to find out what criteria a customer uses in purchasing or downloading a mobile phone game and what influences them to do so. This paper will explore the factors that effect to customer while they make decision on whether or not to download the game. The data was collected by an interview with 9 respondents who are in the age group of 25-30 years old. The result from the interview determines that customers behaviors toward games, the game rankings in the App Store, and the news aggregator sites plays a role that affect customer purchasing/downloading intention for a game. From the information gathered from the interview and from the research, a model can be developed to explain how a game can propagate into the population of gamer after it is released. KEY WORDS: Diffusion of Innovation/Game App Marketing/Mobile Phone Games