Technology Strategies for Personalized Marketing in the Computer Game Industry

Abstract: The computer game industry has during the past years performed a paradigm shift from physical to digital online retailing based on game portals. Due to the many possibilities Big Data in combination with personalized marketing provides, especially in the form on in-game shops in the software, it is interesting for the computer game companies to investigate how this marketing approach can be performed most beneficially. Since the computer game industry has not been thoroughly investigated in relation to personalized marketing and customer integrity, it has in this study been performed as a predictive research, based on how personalized marketing is used in other industries. This benchmark has been combined with a literature study as well as a case study on a Swedish computer game company, Paradox Interactive in the form of personal interviews, a customer survey as well as gathering of internal data. The analysis of the chosen industries, the grocery store industry, the travel and hospitality industry as well the online gambling industry, demonstrates the importance of offering the customers relevant marketing offers that benefits the customers as well as the company. This approach has been shown to imply a positive spiral of increased customer loyalty and raised revenue for the company. The performed customer surveys emphasizes high loyalty, satisfied customers, positive attitude for a loyalty program as well as for an in-game shop as well as a majority of positively minded customers for personalized marketing. The negatively minded was shown to be affected by data security, the feeling of being monitored as well as the fear for data spread. The investigation further shows a high level of technology knowledge among the computer game customers. This increases the importance of offering high data security as well as describes the used approaches for the customers. Based on these results recommendations related to the implementation of personalized marketing was developed for computer game companies. These emphasizes the importance of using secure techniques related to the data security and the explicit information related to this, which is argued to lead to increased trust amongst the customers and an increased willingness to share personal data. Further the data and information related to the customers should be gathered from different sources and be analyzed together in order to increase the deep of the knowledge about the customers, which enables more accurate and relevant offers. This relevance should be high, but well balanced in relation to the negative aspects related to customers’ possible feeling of being monitored.   For increased knowledge about the customers as well improved customer loyalty the computer game companies should implement loyalty programs, which should be well aligned with the image of the company. This study contributes to the theoretical field related to personalized marketing by investigating how current models and theories aligns with, or should be modified in order to match, the computer game industry. Besides from this it contributes with theories related to data security within the field of personalized marketing, focused on personal integrity and privacy. Theories related to the importance of trust from the customers and the relation between trust and loyalty has been verified for the computer game industry. The importance of identifying a well-balanced level of the personalization has been verified, which in turn falsifies the theories emphasizing that maximized personalization is to strive for. Theories related to key aspects to take into consideration related to data security and handling of personal data has been verified for the computer game industry related to the handling of Big Data.