Online Promotional Games: Impact of Flow Experience on Word-of-Mouth and Personal Information Sharing

Abstract

Viral campaigns widely use online promotional games. They are an innovative and a compelling way to capture the attention of the target audience, and encourage consumers to interact with brands. The goal is to offer consumers a content that influence customer behaviour. As more immersive games are developed, online promotional games possess a number of features that make them a compelling opportunity for the study of flow. Flow is a mental state of operation in which a person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. In this way, this research proposes to evaluate the impact of online promotional games on the willingness to communicate personal and social data (word-of-mouth) in respect with an approach focused on flow. A study is carried out on a sample of French individuals from a mega base of e-mails for promotional offers. Respondents were invited to play to a branded online promotional game created for a viral marketing campaign. The results show that the flow experience depends on the balance between the perceived skill ability and the perceived challenge. Flow experience is positively related impact the decision to diffuse the message and to share personal information with the brand.

Flow in gaming: literature synthesis and framework development

“…If a mismatch between challenge and skill occurs, the state of flow can be inhibited. As demonstrated by Jin (2011Jin ( , 2012 and Renard (2013), the combination of a high level of challenge and a high level of skill resulted in the highest level of flow state. Interestingly, however, Wang and Chen (2010) found that challenging games induced more flow experiences than those that attempted to match game challenge to skills, although the latter demonstrated greater project performance.…”

“…Although it is generally the case that highest flow is attained when game challenge and player skill are well balanced or matched (Jin, 2011(Jin, , 2012Renard, 2013), Schneider and Cornwell (2005) found that novice players experienced more flow than experienced players in low-challenge tasks. They concluded that the challenge presented by the game was not high enough for experienced players.…”

“…In the context of gaming, exploratory behaviour refers to "the degree to which the user is eager to check out new games and find out about the latest game just out of curiosity" [Hsu, (2010), p.54]. Renard (2013) found that players who experienced flow were more likely to share personal information and carry out word-of-mouth promotions. Also, several studies have found flow to be a contributing factor to addiction in gaming (Chou and Ting, 2003;Khang et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2013).…”

“…In a promotional social game context, the players' flow experience was determined by the balance of perceived skill ability and perceived challenge (Renard, 2013). The flow experience was highest when both perceived skill ability and challenge were high.…”

Evolving the online customer experience … is there a role for online customer support?

“…In the online environment, the experience is often comprised by the inaccessibility of service staff along with machine responses (Yang;Jun, 2002). Over recent years however, technological advancements through web 2.0 functionality and social media have enabled the development of a more interactive social environment that provides B2B, B2C and C2C communication (Renard, 2013). The introduction of online social functions has developed what we see as the 'social customer' raising the expectation on being able to communicate online (Greenberg, 2010).…”