The Impact of New Content and User Community Membership on Usage of Online Games

The authors investigate the motivations behind product usage in categories characterized by frequent product updates and social interactions between users. The proposed approach builds on theoretical work on experiential products to define consumer utility as a function of intrinsic preferences, social interactions, the match of content with user experience, and future benefits. The authors empirically test their model using an individual data set from the online gaming industry on daily content consumption, product innovation, and group membership. The results show that usage of simpler features is primarily motivated by intrinsic preferences, while group interactions and future benefits of learning about the product are relatively more important to explain consumption of more complex content. The authors find that an early innovation schedule and lowering content complexity can motivate engagement in initial stages of the product lifecycle, while providing incentives to social interactions is useful to increase content consumption in later stages. The authors' approach can be used to optimize the schedule and content of new product updates.