Linking digital game-playing motivations to food consumption

As gamification and digital game playing is getting more and more popular, also business-life is increasingly relying on this phenomenon for attracting different consumer groups. To illustrate, food companies are trying to find new ways to appeal customers and answer to their market demands through development of new snacks concepts. Acquiring more in-depth understanding how snacks consumption, digital game playing and social media usage are intertwined in the consumers’ mundane lives provides better chances for companies to develop matching product and service concepts. Our multidisciplinary Co-creative snacks –project connects applied research of food, consumer behavior and games. The aims of this study are 1) to specify a conceptual rationale for connecting the player motivations to the perception of food products and 2) to empirically identify consumer segments based on their player motivations and especially to show how they relate to differences in snack-eating preferences. Data on consumer behavior in snacking, games and use of social media was collected in Finland (n = 387) via online survey.

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