A survey of the preferences of Hungarian e-sports consumers

Abstract

Currently, e-sports is one of the most popular leisure activities among young people and its role is expected to grow continuously in the future. In our research, we investigated which attributes are the most important for users in choosing e-sport games in our country. To investigate consumer preferences towards e-sports games, we used an internationally widespread preference valuation method known as Best-Worst Scaling, its object case. We examined the following seven aspects: continuous bug fixes, availability on PC, frequent balance changes, free of charge, transparent user interface, low PC requirements and time limit in matches. In the primary research, we used an online survey with 1,088 participants. Respondents considered continuous bug fixes to be the most important attribute. To examine preference heterogeneity, further statistical analyses were conducted using individual-level Best-Worst scores. In the final analysis, we examined the results of the three clusters obtained from the K-means clustering procedure. The first cluster consisted of people with higher incomes, who spend a lot of time on e-sports-related activities, and who consider frequent balance changes important. The second cluster tended to include mainly female respondents with higher education, lower incomes, preferring PC accessibility, computer requirements and free of charge. The third cluster was composed of mostly male respondents with the lowest educational qualifications, higher incomes, preferring time and interface.