Can visual familiarity influence attitudes towards brands? An exploratory study of advergame design and cross-cultural consumer behaviour

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between advergame design, advergame experience and consumer behaviour across cultures. For this purpose, a study was designed to compare and contrast behaviour patterns across Brazilian and British cultures. An advergame (Colheita de Café (CC)), featuring the Fairtrade mark was developed through a semiotics approach. Participants from both Brazil (N=30) and the UK (N=34) were invited to play the advergame and answer a questionnaire before and after gameplay. The results indicate that Brazilians felt more familiar with the visual elements incorporated by the advergame when compared to British consumers. Brazilians also had more favourable attitudes towards the brand, suggesting that visual familiarity could influence consumer behaviour. Contrary to our expectations, both Brazilian and British respondents had the same attitudes towards the advergame, showing that visual familiarity did not particularly influence the advergame experience. The main contribution of this paper is the suggestion that visual familiarity could influence consumer behaviour across cultures. We expect that our findings can be used in future research that examines cultural nuances in advergame design.

The Gamification of Branded Content: A Meta-Analysis of Advergame Effects

“…We ran several exploratory analyses to examine the potential moderating effects of variables that have been used in prior research (e.g., Gross 2010;Wanick et al 2018;Van Reijmersdal, Rozendaal, and Buijzen 2012;Yegiyan and Lang 2010). The moderators that we considered for our exploratory analyses were sex of the player, brand type (real versus fictitious), gameproduct congruity, exposure time, and advertising cue prominence.…”

Identifying the success factors of advergames: a mixed-method approach

“…The results showed that demographic characteristics such as age, education and occupation influence brand equity. So these factors should be taken into account when designing advertising games Wanick et al (2018) Can visual familiarity influence attitudes toward brands? An exploratory study of advergame design and cross-cultural consumer behavior…”

“…Game design factors were considered as one of the key success factors of advergames in the experts' standpoint (Wanick et al, 2018). This recommends advergames designers to consider features such as offering the players to choose the difficulty level, the possibility to invite family/friends, explicit rules in the game, game navigation, the possibility to play in groups, the possibility to create players' characters or symbols in the game, offering the players a variety of rewards, showing the scoring lists of players, using celebrity characters in games and comparing players' progress to create an emotional relationship between the players and the game because the purpose of these games is to make users involved and engaged.…”

“…They used 195 samples of advergames to recognize and categorize their persuasive mechanisms. Likewise, Wanick et al (2018) examined the relationship between advergame design, advergame experience and consumer behavior across cultures. According to Cicchirillo (2019), research works in the field of advergame, while robust, have some shortcomings; hence, new research is necessary to better understand gamification approach.…”

Digital Gaming and the Advertising Landscape

“…A more recent study (Wanick, Stallwood, Ranchhod, & Wills, 2018), has explored the influence of visual familiarity toward brands in advergames. The study showed that visual familiarity does not affect the game experience and the attitude toward the game, but it does influence consumer behavior and brand attitude.…”