Influence of Personalized Marketing on Customer Loyalty in the Interactive Entertainment Industry

Key words: personalized marketing, customer loyalty, satisfaction attributes, interactive entertainment industry. The purpose of the study is to examine the influence of personalized marketing on customer loyalty in the interactive entertainment industry. The object of the research are the users of Steam service (the digital distribution service of computer games and programs). The subject of the study is personalized marketing and its influence on customer loyalty. Hypotheses that there is an influence of personalized marketing on both a willingness to recommend the service and the intention of making repeated purchases in it, as well as on overall satisfaction with the Steam service were tested. The data was collected using in-depth interviews and a formalized survey of users of the service. To achieve this goal, the mixed design of the study was used. At the preliminary qualitative stage, a content analysis of in-depth interviews was conducted, which allowed revealing 28 attributes of satisfaction, which served as the basis of the questionnaire for a formalized survey. The survey, where 336 people took part, was subjected to a factor analysis procedure to understand the structure of data and reduce the dimension. Based on the five factors obtained, which acted as predictors, there were constructed 3 regression models. The factor associated with personalized marketing had a significant positive impact on customer loyalty in all models. Thus, all the hypotheses were confirmed. Also, there was applied the procedure of cluster analysis in the study, which allowed to identify 5 segments of customers and describe their specifics.