Exploring Purchase and Repurchase Behavior in Online Mobile Games: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

With the popularity of mobile games, mobile phones have become the first choice for consumer entertainment. However, few players are willing to continually spend money on mobile games. There is a significant need to understand players' purchase behaviors and repurchase behaviors. Thus, this paper uses social cognitive theory as a theoretical basis to develop a research model for understanding players' purchase behaviors, as well as repurchase behaviors, in relation to mobile games. Specifically, the model first divides the factors of players' purchase behaviors into self-cognition and social environment. For the self-cognition aspect, uses and gratifications theory is applied to separate players' gratification from hedonic gratification and utilitarian gratification. For social environment, conformity is used to study how social environments influence purchase behaviors. Moreover, the model considers flow as a moderating variable to explore the relationship between players' purchase and repurchase behaviors for mobile games.