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Abstract With the popularity of football as a sport and FIFA as a game around the world, gamers are exposed to the advertisements that appear as part of the game. While past researches have explored different factors that may influence brand recall in video gamers, there has been a lack of focus on dynamically-paced sports games like FIFA, especially in Singapore, where football is a popular sport. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of marketing efforts on gamers with varying experiences and characteristics, so as to identify more effective methods for FIFA game sponsors to categorise their marketing targets. In this study, 52 participants aged 18 to 30 were recruited to play the FIFA game on the Play Station 3 console. The participants were then asked to fill in a survey to test for their brand recall and recognition levels, as well as game proficiency and involvement levels. The results showed that gender differences, game proficiency, as well as experience in FIFA games and watching football did not significantly impact brand recall level. However, participants with higher interest levels in video games attained higher scores, and had lower levels of unaided recall. These thus suggest that FIFA game brand sponsors may achieve better marketing results if they were to categorise their target gamers according to psychographic factors, such as involvement level in video games. Keywords: Brand Recall; Video Games; Experiences; Game Proficiency; Involvement Level
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables Tables Title Pages Table 1. Brand recall of participants with and without prior experience in the FIFA game
Table 2. Brand recall of participants who watch and do not watch football 19 Table 3. Brand recall of participants with low and high net scores in the FIFA game
Table 4. Brand recall of female and male participants 20 Table 5. Brand recall of participants with low and high involvement levels in video games
Table 6. Relationship between gender, score, and involvement level of participants
Table 7. Relationship between score and involvement level of participants 22
List of Abbreviations Abbreviations Description ESA Entertainment Software Association FIFA Fédération Internationale de Football Association NBA National Basketball Association LC4MP Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing EA Sports Electronic Arts Sports IBM International Business Machines SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background With the recent World Cup and ongoing English Premier League, people around the world have their focus on this fever. In the midst of this football trend, sponsors have their brands displayed in the stadiums and promoted to viewers all around the world (Becker, 2018). This display of brands is replicated in the FIFA video games, and exposed to gamers as well. According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) (2018), 64% of households in the United States own a video gaming device. This trend is projected around the world as new versions of games are continuously created and sold. As more games and video gaming platforms are produced, more people are exposed to in-game advertising (Banerjee, 2017). Past researches have also concluded that gamers perceive in-game advertisements fairly positively when they add a sense of realism to the game (Nelson, Keum, & Yaros, 2004). Particularly, sports video gamers are more receptive to these advertisements compared to other video gamers (Nelson, 2002). Therefore, along with a growing number of video gamers, positive attitudes from sports video gamers have contributed significantly to the expansion of the market for in-game advertisers (La Marca, 2013). 1.2. Purpose and Rationale Despite growing interests and research in topics related to in-game advertising, a majority of the researches have been done on racing games (Gangadharbatla, 2016; Schneider & Cornwell, 2005; Toh & Leng, 2014). In comparison, a relatively small number of researches have been conducted on more dynamically-paced sports video games like American football (Cianfrone, Trail, Zhang, & Lutz, 2008), basketball and football (Kim & Leng, 2017), especially in the context of Singapore, where football is a popular sport. Meanwhile, researchers
have also been exploring various factors that may affect the effectiveness of in-game advertising and brand recognition level. 1.3. Aims The focus of this research is to add a new dimension to the existing pool of studies, by exploring the differences in the effectiveness of in-game advertisement in the dynamically- paced football video game, FIFA, between gamers of varying experiences and characteristics in Singapore. The results of this study can then be used to guide future brand sponsors on more effective methods to classify target audiences and promote their brands.
Sports Council, 2011; “Sports Index: Participation Trends 2015”, 2016). Furthermore, despite FIFA being one of the top best-selling games (ESA, 2018), little research has been done on brand recall within games of the same sort. Additionally, Schneider and Cornwell (2005) analysed the effectiveness of banner advertisements in a car racing game. Two reasons for gamers’ recall of in-game advertisements were that the advertisement banner was at a difficult turn requiring the car to slow down, and that the car repeatedly crashed into a particular banner. In contrast, football is more dynamically-paced. Playing a football match within the game may require a different skillset and amount of cognitive resources compared to racing games. Therefore, different results may be anticipated when studying the effectiveness of advertisement boards in the FIFA game. In response to the popularity of football and FIFA amongst Singaporean gamers, this study has been initiated. This research therefore aims to identify the possible differences in brand recall among Singaporean FIFA gamers with different levels of gaming experiences, proficiency and interests. In addition to previous studies, this study aims to build on the existing knowledge on the relationship between gaming experiences and brand recall. This study also specifically focuses on the brands on advertisement boards around the field of play in FIFA, in order to examine their effectiveness as accurately as possible. In order to determine the factors influencing brand recall level, this study aims to answer the following research questions:
- How do prior FIFA gaming and football viewership experiences affect brand recall?
- How does gaming proficiency level affect brand recall?
- How does gender affect brand recall?
- How does involvement level in video games affect brand recall?
2.1. Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing The limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (LC4MP) (Lang,
- was discussed and used as a theoretical framework for majority of the previous studies on the effectiveness of in-game advertising (Dardis, Schmierbach, Sherrick, Waddell, Aviles, Kumble, & Bailey, 2016; Gangadharbatla, 2016). This theory explains how people have a limited capacity to process information presented to them. There is a limit to the amount of cognitive resources available to store and engage with information. Schneider and Cornwell (2005) mentioned that a gamer’s ability to navigate through a game is dependent on his/her skills and gaming experiences, concluding that gaming experts have higher brand recognition and recall levels. This is probably because experts are able to afford less visual resources to the main task of playing the game, and thus have ‘spare’ attention to take in the surroundings (Lang, 2005). Based on the LC4MP theory, it can be anticipated that players who have more experience playing FIFA are able to afford more attention to their surroundings. As more experienced players are more familiar with the controls and general aspects of the game, they may require less cognitive resources to focus on their primary task (Toh & Leng, 2014). This leaves more remaining resources for the secondary task of noticing the advertisement boards.
3.3. Research Procedures Participants were invited to a quiet room with minimal visual and auditory distractions, and informed that they would be required to play a football game on the Play Station 3 console before completing a short survey. Minimal information on the study agenda was given as deception was important to prevent participants from being primed to look out for advertisements during the study (Schneider & Cornwell, 2005). Participants were also asked to indicate their consent to participating in the study after reading the protocol. Once participants arrived at the study location, they were briefed on the rules of the game, followed by the basic controls on the game controller (see Appendix A). All conditions were kept constant in order to minimise the variables. Every participant was assigned to the same football team with the same opponent, jersey, football stadium, match ball, weather conditions, duration as well as difficulty level. In the quiet room, the sound system of the television was also adjusted to the same volume for every participant, ensuring that the live commentary in the game engaged each player equally. These precautions were made to minimise both visual and audio forms of distractions for the players, since the visual and audio quality of the game may affect brand recall rates (Leng, 2017). To reciprocate a more realistic gaming experience, the participants were only handed the controller after the pre-game introductory video was skipped, as most gamers usually skip the introductory video, as reflected in the high demand online for tutorials on skipping these scenes (Cole-Cocking, 2018; "How to skip introduction and intermezzo's (in-game)", 2014). For the same purpose of creating a realistic game setting, rather than reducing the game duration, the full game lasted for 8 minutes. In addition, longer gaming duration can maximise the variation in players’ scores, which will aid in classifying players according to their proficiency levels later on. In order to focus the study’s results on the advertisement boards, all close-up scenes of the footballers’ apparel, including jersey and boots, were skipped during the game so
that participants were not exposed to additional brands. These measures were taken for all participants to ensure consistency in the results. 3.4. Measures Immediately after the game was completed, participants were given a survey form to complete for the next 5 to 10 minutes. This study is focused on explicit, short-term memory of the participants. In other words, each participant’s conscious memory of brands in the FIFA game was tested (Balasubramanian, Karrh, & Patwardhan, 2006; Yang, Roskos-Ewoldsen, Dinu, & Arpan, 2006). The first section of the form was divided into two sub-sections – the Unaided Recall section and Aided Recall Section. 3.4.1. Brand Recall and Recognition 3.4.1.1. Brand Recall Brand recall was measured in the Unaided Recall section by asking participants to list as many brands as they could recall seeing, based on methods used by past studies (Chaney, Hosany, Wu, Chen, & Ngyuen, 2018; Dardis et al., 2016; Mackay, Ewing, Newton, & Windisch, 2009). As brand recall is a dichotomous variable – the only possible results being recall or no recall (Chaney et al., 2018), the highest possible recall score was 6 and lowest possible 0. 3.4.1.2. Brand Recognition Brand recognition was tested in the Aided Recall section, which included multiple choice questions on whether the particular brands mentioned appeared in the game, similar to methods in previous studies (Chaney et al., 2018; Kim & Leng, 2017; Mackay et al., 2009). In this section, participants were asked to identify the brands that
3.4.3. Game Proficiency Level In this study, the net number of goals scored (total goals scored – total goals conceded) was used to measure the proficiency levels of participants. Rather than Kim and Leng’s (2017) method of measuring participants’ perceived gaming skills, utilising scores from the game can more accurately gauge their actual gaming abilities and hence game proficiency levels. According to Schneider and Cornwell (2005), better gamers recall brands better, whereby prior gaming experience increases brand recall and recognition level. Furthermore, Herrewijn and Poels (2013) also concluded that more difficult game levels resulting in higher levels of arousal, challenge and greater concentration lead to poorer brand recognition. Similarly, less experienced players may find the same game more difficult, hence affording less focus on the advertisements. However, another study by Yeu, Yoon, Taylor, and Lee (2013) produced results that showed no difference in the explicit and implicit memory of in-game advertisements between gamers of different proficiency levels. Based on the theory of LC4MP by Lang (2005), players who have prior experience in FIFA gaming and hence ultimately perform better in the game, should be expected to have higher brand recall levels. This is because they are more likely to be able to allocate more cognitive resources for the non-primary task of noticing advertisements, since they may require less focus on the primary task of playing the game itself. In contrast, participants without prior experience in FIFA may notice less brands as they may experience cognitive overload, since they have to learn the game controls on top of playing the game and noticing the brands appearing. As a result, there may be less cognitive resources remaining to process in-game advertisements. 3.4.4. Gender Differences between males and females in brand recall rates were also examined in this
study. In a study by Gangadharbatla (2008), the results indicated that female gamers have higher levels of brand recall when compared to male gamers. However, Mackay et al. (2009) and Toh and Leng (2014) found no significant difference in brand recall and recognition levels between the two genders in their studies. 3.4.5. Involvement Level in Video Games Also known as Domain Involvement from past research, involvement level in the context of video games refers to the amount of interest that players have in video games in general. Measuring the involvement levels of participants can provide an insight to the importance of video games in their lives (Fisher & Wakefield, 1998). Participants were asked questions to measure the amount of interest they have and hence their levels of involvement in video games. These questions were created using a 5-point Likert scale, based on previous studies (Toh & Leng, 2014). A study by Gwinner and Swanson (2003) reported that higher domain involvement level contributes to higher fan identification level, which is positively related to sponsor brand recall rate. Hence, participants with higher involvement levels are expected to better identify with and recall more brands in the FIFA game (Fisher & Wakefield, 1998). In contrast, Lee and Faber (2007) reported that gamers with extremely high and low involvement levels have poorer brand recall rates than those with moderate involvement levels. The sequence of questions in the questionnaire was set such that participants were able to answer brand recall questions with the game still fresh in their minds. Next, questions on personal details such as FIFA gaming and football viewership experience, as well as interests in video-gaming were then asked when participants felt less defensive of their personal information. Upon completing the survey, participants were also informed of the purpose of
CHAPTER 4 – RESULTS
Following data collection, one participant was revealed to have been conscious of the topic of in-game advertisements, resulting in a significantly larger number of brands recalled compared to the mean. The presence of this outlier was detected and hence removed from the data pool before running the data through SPSS. Table 1. Brand recall of participants with and without prior experience in the FIFA game Played FIFA a Never played FIFA b t-value Mean Unaided Recall .43 (SD = .634) .30 (SD = .470). Mean Aided Recall 1.96 (SD = 1.11) 1.87 (SD = 1.39). a (^) 𝑛 = 28.; b (^) 𝑛 = 23. There was no significant difference in brand recall between participants who played FIFA ( M = .43, SD = .634) and never played FIFA ( M = .30, SD = .470; t (49) = .779, p = .440, two-tailed). Similarly, there was no significant difference in brand recognition between those who played FIFA ( M = 1.96, SD = 1.11) and never played FIFA ( M = 1.87, SD = 1.39; t (49) = .271, p = .788, two-tailed). Table 2. Brand recall of participants who watch and do not watch football Watch Footballa^ Do Not Watch Footballb^ t-value Mean Unaided Recall .43 (SD = .626) .29 (SD = .463). Mean Aided Recall 2.07 (SD = 1.26) 1.71 (SD = 1.19) 1. a (^) 𝑛 = 30.; b (^) 𝑛 = 21. The difference in brand recall rates between participants who watch football ( M = .43, SD = .626) and those who do not ( M = .29, SD = .463; t (49) = .918, p = .363, two-tailed) was not significant. This was the same for brand recognition between participants who watch
football ( M = 2.07, SD = 1.26) and participants who do not ( M = 1.71, SD = 1.19; t (49) = 1.01, p = .319, two-tailed). Table 3. Brand recall of participants with low and high net scores in the FIFA game Low Scorea^ High Scoreb^ t-value Mean Unaided Recall .42 (SD = .578) .32 (SD = .557). Mean Aided Recall 1.92 (SD = 1.47) 1.92 (SD = .954). a (^) 𝑛 = 26.; b (^) 𝑛 = 25. Participants with scores below the average 4.47 were categorised into the ‘Low Score’ group and those with scores above 4.47 into the ‘High Score’ group. According to Table 3, there was no significant difference in brand recall between the ‘Low Score’ group ( M = .42, SD = .578) and ‘High Score’ group ( M = .32, SD = .557; t (49) = .648, p = .520, two-tailed). The same was observed for brand recognition between the ‘Low Score’ group ( M = 1.92, SD = 1.47) and ‘High Score’ group ( M = 1.92, SD = .954; t (43.1) = .009, p = .993, two-tailed). Hence, game proficiency level was not a significant variable influencing brand recall rate. Table 4. Brand recall of female and male participants Femalea^ Maleb^ t-value Mean Unaided Recall .42 (SD = .578) .32 (SD = .557). Mean Aided Recall 1.88 (SD = 1.40) 1.96 (SD = 1.06) -. a (^) 𝑛 = 26.; b (^) 𝑛 = 25. According to Table 4, the difference between the mean number of brands recalled by females ( M = .42, SD = .578) and males ( M = .32, SD = .557; t (49) = .648, p = .520, two-tailed) was not significant. This was the same for brand recognition in females ( M = 1.88, SD = 1.40) and males ( M = 1.96, SD = 1.06; t (49) = - .217, p = .829, two-tailed). Hence, gender was also not a significant factor affecting brand recall.
