Gaming The Gamers Case Study
Gaming the Gamers: Using Experience Maps to Develop Revenue-Generating Insights
Case Analysis
1. Overview
WebTel, one of the internet services providers in U.S., is looking for an opportunity to increase revenues coming from the gaming user segment. This segment is the main customer of the WebTel’s broadband internet services and spent $7 billion each year to the gaming industry that grows at an annual rate of 16 percent. WebTel aims to engage with this segment deeply by truly understanding their interests and priorities and get a share of the cake.
In 2010, WebTel was the fifth largest internet services company in U.S. whereas the top 4 companies have the 50 percent of the internet services market share. The company generated …show more content…
Then, more detailed second research is done to sub segment the gamers and to be able to understand industry-level trends.
WebTel believed that deeper understanding of the customer behaviors will carry the company one step further. Besides quantitative research, they wanted to run qualitative research on the top 3 gamer segments to have a holistic picture of the gamers and explore their behavior patterns. Company worked with a Canadian research firm, nForm, in that stage. nForm used different techniques to understand the behavior characteristics of the gamers. They first run “usability testing” in the WebTel’s portal to find out real customers and their reactions to different functions on the website. Then they surveyed the customers and conducted phone interviews to evaluate lifecycle of a gamer. In the end, nForm build typical consumer profiles named persona and came up with “experience maps”- a graphic illustration of each persona’s journey through the phases such as recognition of the product, evaluation, making purchasing decision, purchasing, playing experiment, sharing the experience with …show more content…
Research Findings
Some other key results of the quantitative segmentation study on gamers:
¬ A majority of American adults (70%) with an internet connection had played a game in the last six months and 60 million American purchased a video game in the last year.
¬ Although playing video games is especially popular among young men, a substantial number of retirees (12% of all gamers) and women (50%) play video games as well.
¬ About half of the gamer households have children under 18 and this segment composes 60% of game purchases.
The study suggests that gamers actually tend to make more online purchases and spend more money on entertainment content than nongaming population. Growing gaming popularity is directly proportional to household penetration of gaming devices. These devices such as PC, game console (Nintendo Wii, Xbox, Rock Band), cell phones, attractive to all kind of buyers with different features they provide. Some of the companies provide subscription services with a fee that grants users some features such as free games, interactive online game play.
The segmentation research returned five main segments. Solitary Gamers, Genre Gamers, and Multiplayer Gamers represented 88 percent of all gamers, whereas Occasional Gamers and Reluctant Gamers were smaller
Case Analysis
1. Overview
WebTel, one of the internet services providers in U.S., is looking for an opportunity to increase revenues coming from the gaming user segment. This segment is the main customer of the WebTel’s broadband internet services and spent $7 billion each year to the gaming industry that grows at an annual rate of 16 percent. WebTel aims to engage with this segment deeply by truly understanding their interests and priorities and get a share of the cake.
In 2010, WebTel was the fifth largest internet services company in U.S. whereas the top 4 companies have the 50 percent of the internet services market share. The company generated …show more content…
Then, more detailed second research is done to sub segment the gamers and to be able to understand industry-level trends.
WebTel believed that deeper understanding of the customer behaviors will carry the company one step further. Besides quantitative research, they wanted to run qualitative research on the top 3 gamer segments to have a holistic picture of the gamers and explore their behavior patterns. Company worked with a Canadian research firm, nForm, in that stage. nForm used different techniques to understand the behavior characteristics of the gamers. They first run “usability testing” in the WebTel’s portal to find out real customers and their reactions to different functions on the website. Then they surveyed the customers and conducted phone interviews to evaluate lifecycle of a gamer. In the end, nForm build typical consumer profiles named persona and came up with “experience maps”- a graphic illustration of each persona’s journey through the phases such as recognition of the product, evaluation, making purchasing decision, purchasing, playing experiment, sharing the experience with …show more content…
Research Findings
Some other key results of the quantitative segmentation study on gamers:
¬ A majority of American adults (70%) with an internet connection had played a game in the last six months and 60 million American purchased a video game in the last year.
¬ Although playing video games is especially popular among young men, a substantial number of retirees (12% of all gamers) and women (50%) play video games as well.
¬ About half of the gamer households have children under 18 and this segment composes 60% of game purchases.
The study suggests that gamers actually tend to make more online purchases and spend more money on entertainment content than nongaming population. Growing gaming popularity is directly proportional to household penetration of gaming devices. These devices such as PC, game console (Nintendo Wii, Xbox, Rock Band), cell phones, attractive to all kind of buyers with different features they provide. Some of the companies provide subscription services with a fee that grants users some features such as free games, interactive online game play.
The segmentation research returned five main segments. Solitary Gamers, Genre Gamers, and Multiplayer Gamers represented 88 percent of all gamers, whereas Occasional Gamers and Reluctant Gamers were smaller