题　目：Social Status-Seeking in Online Game Community and Its Effects on User Engagement and Purchases

嘉　宾：Peng Liu, Assistant Professor, Santa Clara University

主持人：张铄  助理教授  上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时　间：2023年6月28日（周三）13:30-15:00

地　点：上海交通大学 徐汇校区 安泰经济与管理学院A303

内容简介:

We study the motivation for pursuing higher social status among players in an online game community, and how such motivation influences players’ decisions of game engagement and purchases. We develop and estimate a dynamic model that captures how a player makes decisions and how those decisions impact future promotions of the guild rank, which is a proxy for the social status of the players. Results show that attaining a higher guild rank significantly increases a player’s utility, suggesting that social status-seeking motivation exists in the community. Furthermore, game item purchases and play time help increase the chance of future promotion, which will motivate the player to spend more and play more. Such motivation leads to a 12.86% increase in players’ game time and an 11.44% increase in the company’s revenue. We then use counterfactuals to explore how the company can use the social status-seeking motivation to increase its revenue and players’ engagement by giving away a free “utilitarian” game item. These findings have substantive implications for game companies offering players similar types of social functions.

演讲人简介：

刘芃博士于印第安纳大学获得营销学博士学位，现为圣克拉拉大学利维商学院营销系助理教授。在此之前，他在雪城大学获得了经济学硕士学位，在南开大学获得了经济学学士学位。刘芃博士的研究聚焦于数字环境中消费者选择和营销策略。具体而言，他将结构化模型和贝叶斯估计方法相结合，深入探究身份消费、社交网络、动态选择、广告等领域的数字营销问题。刘芃博士的研究已发表在Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Annals of Applied Statistics, TRE 等高水平学术期刊上。

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