Abstract
Purpose – The paper’s aim is to explore the factors that affect the online game addiction and the role
that online game addiction plays in the relationship between online satisfaction and loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach– A web survey of online game players was conducted, with 1,186
valid responses collected. Structure equation modeling – specifically partial least squares – was used
to assess the relationships in the proposed research framework.
Findings– The results indicate that perceived playfulness and descriptive norms influence online
game addiction. Furthermore, descriptive norms indirectly affect online game addiction through
perceived playfulness. Addiction also directly contributes to loyalty and attenuates the relationship
between satisfaction and loyalty. This finding partially explains why people remain loyal to an online
game despite being dissatisfied.
Practical implications– Online gaming vendors should strive to create amusing game content and
to maintain their online game communities in order to enhance players’ perceptions of playfulness and
the effects of social influences. Also, because satisfaction is the most significant indicator of loyalty,
vendors can enhance loyalty by providing better services, such as fraud prevention and the detection
of cheating behaviors.
Originality/value – The value of this study is that it reveals the moderating influences of addiction
on the satisfaction-loyalty relationship and factors that contribute to the online game addiction.
Moreover, while many past studies focused on addiction’s negative effects and on groups considered
particularly vulnerable to Internet addiction, this paper extends previous work by investigating the
relationship of addiction to other marketing variables and by using a more general population, mostly
young adults, as research subjects.
Keywords Indoor games, Internet, Addiction, Customer satisfaction, Customer loyalty
Paper typeResearch paper