The fascination of virtual skins and consumers buying behaviour in Counter Strike Global Offensive

The objective of this thesis was to find out the fascination of virtual skins in Counter Strike Global Offensive. What are the thriving factors in buying, selling or trading? The market for skins is massive and unknown to many. Is there a correlation with esports and skins and if so, how big of an impact do the Majors have in the market. Majors are the biggest tournaments of the year and the player and teams who participate, receive their own stickers and autographs in the game. Video gaming has been a part of our lives for more than 50 years already but eSports as a whole is still fairly new industry. The author believes it will be even bigger in the future and possibly an Olympic sport as well. The market for skins is also a positive thing that gets people and players excited as some of the skins today could be worth thousands tomorrow. Not just for Counter Strike, but for other games as well. The author conducted the research on the subject and found out very interesting points regarding the market. The thesis started with an insight on eSports as an industry and the game itself, Counter Strike. A 5v5 FPS game with a huge market behind it with skins. The research on customer behaviour is really important, developers need to know what makes an ideal target customer for the game and skins. How has a free-to-play game come so far as to be one of the biggest games in the world. The author believes it would not be like this without the introduction of skins back in the Arms Deal update in 2013. The results from the questionnaire were somewhat expected regarding the predictions made before and therefore the research proved to be very succesful. The more experienced a player is, it leads to having a more expensive inventory of skins. European players have a bigger inventory compared to others. 3rd party websites are immensely popular and by far the biggest way of obtaining the most expensive skins. The websites are accessible to anyone with a steam account and a phone so it is super simple to start buying, selling and trading skins. For profit or for the consumer. These sites and skins overall made the game what it is today