Advergaming, uma estratégia promocional interativa: um estudo experimental

Abstract

The advent of web 2.0 has transformed the internet into a multidirectional channel, changing the way consumers relate to companies (JAFFE, 2006). In this context interactivity has become essential for companies to be able to promote the engagement and increase the value of their brands (TUTEN; SOLOMON, 2013). Only in Brazil, between casual and hardcore gamers, 11.8 million people play digital games, in a billionaire industry (SWEEPS, 2012). In this scenario, this study aimed to understand the effect generated by advergaming, which is the deliver of marketing messages in digital games (HERNANDEZ et al., 2010), in the players attitudes towards the brand and in the attitude to the effectiveness of these strategies, as well as the brand recall. To this end, it presented and compared the characteristics of the main strategies of advergaming, the advergames (brand-themed games) and the in-game advertisings (games with insertion of brands). The research model chosen to achieve the objectives was the causal research, using the experimental method. In the experiment 165 students was randomly divided into three groups, who played games with different levels of brand exposure: game without inserting brand, game with the fictional brand created for the experiment inserted in the background (in-game advertising) and themed game created for the fictional brand (advergame). They answered questions about the attitude towards the brand, recall, attitude towards the advergaming, and attitude toward the advergaming in comparison with more traditional advertising formats. The results showed that advergames and in-game lead to a significantly positive change on attitude towards the brand and that the observed frequencies of brand recall was significantly higher in advergames compared to in-game advertisings. In addition, the findings show that the recent interaction with advergames, ingame advertisings or games without inserting brand, causes different effects on attitude toward the advergaming and attitude towards the advergaming compared to more traditional formats of advertisement, in which advergame provide greater positive effect on these attitudes. This dissertation concludes that the use of advergaming as a promotional strategy is able to find consumers more receptive to brand messages, is also effective in building a favorable attitude towards the brand, as well as in the aspect of building brand awareness.