Comparison analysis of video game purchase factors between Japanese and American consumers

Abstract

This paper describes a comparison analysis of video game purchase factors between Japanese and American consumers. The Japanese game industry's growth has been sluggish recently, and Japanese video game publishers have been focusing on foreign markets. To develop a best-seller, the publishers must understand consumers' psychological purchase factors such as ideas and preference. However, traditional studies have not analyzed consumers' latent psychological purchase factors. Therefore, we extract efficient information for developing best-selling video games for domestic and foreign consumers by comparing purchase factor models of Japanese and American consumers. In this experiment, we construct six purchase factor models of Japanese and American consumers by using a creativity technique, and we analyze the purchase factor differences between consumer groups. The results indicate that Japanese consumers tend to pay attention to publisher brand, whereas American consumers attach importance to game platform and expansion of games. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.