Information Systems Review (경영정보학연구)

The Korea Society of Management Information Systems (한국경영정보학회)
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An Empirical Analysis of In-app Purchase Behavior in Mobile Games

모바일 게임 인앱구매에 영향을 주는 요인에 관한 연구

  • Moonkyoung Jang (Hannam University, Global IT Business) ;
  • Changkeun Kim (College of Business Administration, Seoul National University) ;
  • Byungjoon Yoo (College of Business Administration, Seoul National University)
  • 장문경 (한남대학교 글로벌IT경영) ;
  • 김창근 (서울대학교 경영대학) ;
  • 유병준 (서울대학교 경영전문대학원)
  • Received : 2019.09.09
  • Accepted : 2019.12.21
  • Published : 2020.05.31
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Abstract

The mobile game industry has become the one of the fastest growing industries with its astonishing market size. Despite its industrial importance, a few studies empirically considered actual purchasing behavior in mobile games rather than the intention to purchase. Therefore, this paper investigates the key drivers of in-app purchase by analyzing the game-log dataset provided from a mobile game company in Korea. Specifically, the effects of goal-directed, habitual and social-interacted playing behavior are analyzed on in-app purchase. Furthermore, the recursive relationship with playing and purchasing behaviorsis also considered. The result shows that all suggested factors have positive impacts on in-app purchase in the current period. In addition, the effect of previous habitual playing has a positive impact, but the effect of social-interacted playing and in-app purchase in the previous period have negative impacts on in-app purchase of the current period. These findings can improve our understanding of the impact of game playing on in-app purchase in mobile games, and provide meaningful insights for researchers and practitioners.

모바일 게임 산업은 빠르게 성장하는 산업으로 이미 놀라운 크기의 시장 규모를 가지고 있다. 이러한 모바일 게임의 산업적 중요성에 따라 점차 구매의도에 대한 연구와 함께 실제 인앱구매 행동에 관한 연구가 요구되고 있다. 따라서 본 논문은 국내 모바일 게임업체에서 제공한 실제 게임 로그 데이터셋을 분석하여 인앱 구매의 핵심 동인을 연구하였다. 구체적으로, 목표 지향적, 습관적, 그리고 사회적 상호작용적 게임플레이의 인앱구매에 대한 영향을 분석하고, 추가적으로 게임플레이와 구매 행동과의 재귀적 관계도 고려하였다. 음이항 회귀분석 분석 결과, 모든 요인들이 당기의 인앱구매에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 또한, 일반화 적률법 분석 결과, 이전의 습관적인 게임플레이는 인앱구매에 긍정적인 영향을 미치지만, 이전의 사회적 상호작용적 게임플레이와 이전의 인앱구매는 현재의 인앱구매에 부정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 연구 결과를 토대로 본 연구는 모바일 게임플레이의 다양한 특성들이 인앱구매에 미치는 영향에 대한 이해를 향상시킬 수 있으며, 나아가 연구자와 실무자에게 의미 있는 통찰력을 제공할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A3A2099973) and the Institute of Management Research at Seoul National University.

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