When the investors choose : Analysis of business models within the Swedish video game industry

Sammanfattning: Many Swedish video game companies have in recent years been very successful in terms of share price development. Why is it like that? With the purpose to gain an increased understanding of the investor's choice, we here examine which business models are used in the Swedish video game industry. More specifically, we try to identify what similarities do the business models in the successful companies share and what similarities do the non-performing companies share. The analytical framework used is based on Business Model Canvas adapted to the video game industry. We use a qualitative approach with case studies of 10 listed Swedish video gaming companies, five successful and five non-performing, in terms of share price development. The data collected is from secondary sources, mainly the companies' annual reports, fitting the investors narrative with the assumption that secondary data is generally what influences the stock price.In general, the results suggest that similarities between business models among the successful companies largely coincide with similarities between the non-performing companies, which makes the information less valuable for understanding investors' choices. Nevertheless, one unique similarity among successful companies applies to that they in general have broad gaming portfolios that target several unrelated customer segments, i.e. a diversified market. The non-performing companies instead mainly target a niche market. Another unique similarity among successful companies’ business models concerns their use of acquisition strategies. In the non-performing companies' business models, acquisition strategies are largely lacking.