Marketing to Gamers
Video game streaming has introduced to consumers a new method of creating branded content. Popular streaming platforms receive millions of broadcasters and viewers every month, and the current chapter examines the influence of this type of user-generated content on consumers' attitudes and behaviors. The goal of this study is to understand how video game streams function as a marketing tool. To investigate this, a quantitative survey was designed and measured participants' video gaming habits and their perceptions of credibility, usefulness of content, group identification, and purchase intention. Heavier gaming habits were found to be positively related to perceived credibility in a user-generated stream condition. Group identification and stream familiarity were found to be positively related to perceived credibility. These findings hold implications for using video game streams as a marketing tool as heavier gamers were found to perceive user-generated streams as a credible source of information.