Determinants of Social Network Gaming Habitual Behavior among Pakistani Young Consumers: A Uses and Gratification Perspective

Abstract

The social network gaming industry has prospered enormously in past few years but social network gaming service providers are still facing critical issues pertaining to retention of social network gaming consumers since they can easily switch to other social network games. This highlights the research need to identify and validate the factors which determine the habitual behavior of social network gaming consumers. The technical features and motivational factors have been identified to have significant influence over continuous usage of social networking sites and intention to play in prior studies. However, the mentioned domain is still under consideration by multiple researchers focusing on both technical features as well as motivational factors simultaneously to propose and validate a model for prolonged consumption of social network games. Therefore, the present study has proposed and validated a research model by incorporating technical and motivational factors as independent variables with concentration of flow experience and consumer satisfaction as mediating variables to determine social network gaming habitual behavior among Pakistani young consumers. Responses were collected from 2000 Pakistani social network gaming consumers through online questionnaire using convenience sampling technique, out of which 1493 useable responses were considered for data analysis. The primary data analysis was executed through SPSS (version 25) and structural equation modelling was employed through AMOS (version 22) for examining the associations among proposed constructs. Empirical results of the present study have indicated that all established associations among independent variables (game design elements, hedonic gratification, utilitarian gratification and social gratification) with dependent variable (social network gaming habitual behavior) are positive and significant. Similarly, flow experience positively mediates all of the proposed direct relationships. Additionally, consumer satisfaction has been found to mediate the proposed direct relationships expect for the association between hedonic gratification and social network gaming habitual behavior. Furthermore, flow experience and consumer satisfaction also sequentially mediated all of the proposed direct relationships. However, no significant gender differences were found in the light of present study’s analysis indicating similar social network gaming preferences by young male and female consumers of Pakistan. The study viii has significant theoretical and practical contributions and it is limited to young consumers of Pakistan only.