Effects of Flow and Self-Construal on Player Perception of Brand Personality in Advergames

Abstract

We explored the effect of racing advergames on player perception of brand personality and investigated the roles of flow and self-construal in this effect. Participants were 202 male students at colleges in the United States and Taiwan, and they completed pretest and posttest scales relating to their feeling and attitude toward brands before and after playing the racing advergame. The results showed that, when playing advergames, flow and self-construal interacted to influence perception of brand personality. Gamers experiencing high flow during the game provided positive feedback on brand personality, whereas gamers experiencing low flow provided negative feedback. Gamers with an interdependent self-construal reported higher scores for evaluation of brand personality after playing advergames than did gamers with an independent self-construal.

Evaluating Game-Brand Congruity and Flow on Brand Personality by Using Gamifying Learning

“…Although, the digital media have the capability to induce positive individual mental reactions (flow) on brand knowledge (brand awareness and brand attitudes) in interactive environments (Nelson et al, 2006;Wang, Lee, Mantz, & Hung, 2015), the effect of flow statue is to divide into two opposing extremes. Flow negatively affects gamers' brand memory at a 10% level of significance (Schneider & Cornwell, 2005).…”

Evaluating Gamer’s Cognition and Involvement on the Effectiveness of Gamifying Learning

“…A rally advergames can create a specific virtual world with many gaming stimuli for players to build a relationship between game attitude and brand attitude (Wang et al, 2015), and social feature to facilitate an interaction between player and brand meaning (Lin, 2014;Terlutter & Capella, 2013). Advergames may tend to foster collectivistic appeal rather than individualistic appeal.…”

“…Gamers are invited to participate actively and interact with advertising in fantastical environments to achieve marketing targets by using portable consoles, personal and laptop computers, tablets, or mobile phones (Nelson, 2002). They may catch tremendous numbers of potential brand messages, leading to strongly associate with game attitudes and brand attitudes in the process (Wang, Lee, Mantz & Hung, 2015). Although there has been a dramatic increase in the number of publications addressing the studies of effects of gamifying learning on brand attitudes (Cauberghe & Pelsmacker, 2010;Hernandez & Chapa, 2010;Keng, Chang, Chen & Chang, 2016;Lee & Faber, 2007;Lee, Yang & Hung, 2017;Su & Hsaio, 2015;Wang et al, 2015), advergame evaluation is still deficient.…”

“…In an attempt to explore how and when advergame will be most effective, recent literature suggests that "selfconstrual" may influence individual preference toward brand personality on the effectiveness of advergame (Wang, et al, 2015). Individuals with interdependent self-construal (ITSC) hold a view of self that emphasizes connectedness, relationships, external attributes, and social context, whereas individuals with independent selfconstrual (IDSC) hold a view of self which is associated with separateness, independence, internal attributes, and uniqueness of the individual Triandis, 1989).…”

“…Advergames, as advertisements, can provide the function of translating brand messages into differentiating individual self-construal (Wang et al, 2015). Cauberghe and Pelsmacker (2010) suggest that product involvement in future research could explore the advanced relationship between advergames and brand attitudes.…”