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Top1. Introduction
Mobile gaming applications have changed the online gaming industry radically in the recent past. The burgeoning mobile gaming market growth is attributed to affordable price of smartphones, mobile data packs (Anil Kumar et al., 2019) and access to internet (Jeo Parker, 2019). Mobile gaming industry is expected to reach $ 1.1 billion mark by 2020 from $ 290 million from 2016 (Shouvik Das, 2019). As per the statistics in 2019, mobile games are popular among the young generation and it was found that they spend 17.1% of their total time daily and is expected to increase to 19.5% by 2021 (Mansoor Iqbal, 2020). India, being one of the leading markets for mobile gaming applications has generated 60% of global revenue in 2019 in online gaming and is expected to grow 2.9% by 2024 (Robert Williams, 2020). Further, Virtual goods or the mobile in-game items that generate additional revenue for mobile gaming industry (Hamari, 2015).
Virtual goods refer to “objects such as characters, items, currencies and tokens that exist inside online games” (Lehdonvirta, 2009). These are the in-game items include coins, extra lives, outfits, skipping stages, ammunition etc. (Hamari, 2015). Further, Lin & Sun (2007) distinguished virtual goods into two types: functional and decorative. Functional based virtual goods elevate the game users’ competence whereas decorative describes the aesthetic appearance of the game. Gamers buy virtual goods during game play to reduce boredom and derive a sense of enjoyment (Hanner & Zarnekow, 2015). The online gamers purchase virtual in-game items as these game items engage and augment the online game players’ immersion levels during the game play (Drell, 2013) for a better gaming experience. Online gamers use real money to purchase these goods. The new phenomenon has opened up challenging avenues for research on the user attitudes and corresponding behaviour while they are engaged on mobile gaming platforms.
Prior studies focussed on the mobile applications context focussed on the factors - the flow experience (Hoffman & Novak, 2009), user satisfaction (Lee et al., 2018), game engagement (Hamari et al., 2016); continuance intention to play the game (Liao et al., 2016). Recent studies by Hsiao et al. (2019) had shown the influence of perceived value, satisfaction leading to in-app purchase intention in Pokeman Go mobile game and in-game purchase (Jang et al., 2019). There is a wide research gap in factoring the mobile in-game purchase intentions (flow experience) and user satisfaction (user-related factors) and their ensuing effect on in-game purchase intention. Studies on purchase behaviour of virtual goods are very limited (Huang et al., 2017).
The current research tries to address this gap through three research questions:
- 1.
What is the effect of antecedents of flow – telepresence, skill and challenge – on mobile gaming flow experience?
- 2.
What is the effect of perceived value dimensions on mobile game user satisfaction?
- 3.
What is the effect of flow experience and user satisfaction on individuals’ in-game purchase intention?
For this, the study examines the antecedents of flow experience based on flow theory, and effect of value dimensions on user satisfaction. In turn, it finally examines the effects of flow experience and user satisfaction on in-game purchase intention. In the present study, we integrated flow theory and TCV to build our research model to study the users’ in-game purchase intention on mobile gaming applications.