What are the motives for eWOM and co-creation on the indie game market? Does the size of the company, co-creation or background variables affect motives?

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this study aims to investigate indie game customer's motives to engage in electric word-of-mouth (eWOM) communications during the post-purchase stage. The market is almost exclusively digital, requiring internet and computer knowledge, consisting of small companies, making it ideal to investigate customer's motives to comment online and what affect the size of a company, co-creation or influencer perception has.Design - A quantative approach was adopted consisting of an online survey built by Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004), one of the most cited researches in the field, to examine motives for eWOM. The survey was adapted to the indie game market and further questions were designed to answer what effects company size, co-creation and influencers perception has. Answers were examined using independent t-tests and ANOVA.Findings - The study revealed that consumer's perception of a company's size does significantly affect their motives to engage in eWOM communications. Further, their perception of influencers and co-creation also proved to affect their motives to engage in eWOM communications. The study confirmed a difference in motives between males and females on four of the eight factors, showing a considerable difference in motives for the two genders. Finally, possible problems with the internal consistency of Thurau et al's (2004) survey was discovered for one of the eight factors. These findings could indicate a poor inter-relatedness of questions or heterogenous constructs and should be researched further.Originality/value - While implications of the adoption of eWOM has been explored in previous research, little is known of the impact a company's size can have on these communications. Furthermore, previous studies have called for further examination into certain fields (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Ngarmwongnoi et al., 2020). By examining a market that only consists of small companies it was possible to understand the affects of size and whether co-creation or influencer perception had an impact. The research also backs up claims from prior research (Fiske, 1980; Ahluwalia, 2002) suggesting that positive motives are more dominant than negative ones. The findings of low internal consistency could prove to have implications on research within the field, as Thurau et al. (2004) is one of the most cited research on the subject. Some findings, such as gender role in motivations, showed to have a far bigger impact than in other recent studies, adding value to the knowledge of this subject.