Hedonic Motives: Influencing players’ impulse buying purchases of virtual goods

Sammanfattning: Thesis purpose: This thesis aims to investigate the broad and well-established phenomenon of impulse buying from a different and unexplored angle. Furthermore, it seeks to explore if players purchase virtual goods on impulse. In addition to this, the purpose of the study is twofold, and it focuses on the examination of certain hedonic motives and if they influence players to purchase on impulse. The second purpose of this study is to test if age and gender, which are demographic characteristics, are able to moderate the relationship between hedonic motives and impulse purchases of virtual goods. Methodology: An explanatory study was selected since the problem being examined is well-structured. Moreover, potential relationships between the independent variables (hedonic motives) and the dependent (impulse purchases of virtual goods) were also investigated. Theoretical perspective: This thesis consists of three literature streams. The first one, refers to the offline and online impulse buying, the second concerns the hedonic motives and the final stream includes literature regarding the video game industry. Empirical data: Primary data was gathered through a web survey. Exactly 65 responses were selected from players who play video games and purchase virtual goods. Conclusion: By investigating the impulse buying phenomenon through the video games category, light is shed upon an unexplored topic where the literature is still scarce. Players’ purchase behavior was studied through hedonic motives which were proven to affect consumers’ buying decisions. The results indicated a significant association between the hedonic motives and player’s intention to impulsively purchase virtual goods. Moreover, the challenge dimension which is not a hedonic motive was included in the category since it affects players intention to play.