Exploring customer preferences for online games

Online content providers who use the Internet to distribute content experience an extremely competitive business environment. To survive in this environment, they have started charging a fee for the content that they provide. However, there have been very few success stories in commercializing online content. Although one of few success stories is the online game, it still has customers’ psychological resistance against paying a high fee for playing games. To pay back their high R&D or development costs quickly, many online game producers have a tendency to assign high prices to their online games. Without examining customers ’ perceived prices for online games, many online game producers have tended to decide prices from their perspectives. Although many online game-related research works have focused on psychological and technical aspects, very few works have examined online gamers ’ preferences carefully. This study aims at exploring online gamers ’ preference by measuring their WTP (Willingness To Pay) for online games