PERSPECTIVE OF GRADE 12 STUDENTS ABOUT

BUYING ONLINE GAME PRODUCTS

A Research paper Presented to

The Faculty of the Senior High School

International Philippine School in Al-Khobar

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Subject

Practical Research II

John Cedfrey B. Narne

2018
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to thank God for giving me knowledge and

strength to do this study. I also would like to thank my parents and my brother, not only

for their support since the beginning of this research but also for helping me thrive and

aim always higher every step of the way. A big thanks to Sir Herbert P. Vargas for the

support and consultation whenever I needed it. I would also like to thank my friends for

their encouragement and motivation along this long path. Finally, I express my gratitude

to all my teachers at International Philippine School in Al-Khobar, for their inspiration

and enthusiasm.
 ABSTRACT

With online gaming industry evolving at a very fast-paced level, gaming

companies are struggling to get recognized by their target customers. More recognition

means more revenue in this industry. Thousands of online games are now available in the

market with almost the same genre. Perspective of grade 12 students, who are familiar

with the industry, will help the companies predict the buying behavior of their target

customers. Knowing the behavior of customers is one of the factors that companies

consider in influencing their target customers in buying your products.

Tackling the monetary value, perspective about online game products have been

studied separately based on the type of products. With the potential to create revenue,

many types of revenue model are currently used in this industry. By focusing only five

variables of perspective namely: perceived usefulness on buying the product, perceived

reasons on buying the product, perceived satisfaction on buying the product, perceived

information security on buying the product, and perceived ease of buying the product;

this study aims to identify the perspective of grade 12 students about buying online game

products and create a connection of their perspective with their online buying behavior.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
 Chapter 1

PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING

Introduction and Related Literature

The online gaming industry has been drastically increasing in today’s digital age.

The industry just keeps on growing and growing. Based on Statista, revenue in the

Philippines from online games segment amounts to US $52 million in 2018. It became a

new source of income for entrepreneurs due to its high revenue rate. In this industry, a lot

of gaming company are focused on the youth as their target audience. According to

Statista, the estimated number of users of online games in the Philippines is 11.42 million

which 23.31% of them are between 18 and 24 years old. Meaning grade 12 students are

likely to be involved with online games.

Online gaming companies are originally built to create revenue, so it is in their

nature to create products that will potentially produce more income to the enterprise. EA

Inc. for example is famous for its excessive and unfair microtransactions. But online

game products are not limited to microtransactions. It also includes online game

merchandise, online game sponsored accessories, online game accounts, online game Elo

rating boosting services, virtual equipment etc. Grade 12 students’ perspective about

buying online game products would be much appreciated by online gaming companies to

improve their services by appealing to their customers perspective in terms of: usefulness

on buying the product, reasons on buying the product, customer’s satisfaction on buying
the product, information security on buying the product, and the ease on buying the

product.

A study done by Siringhoringo, and Hotniar (2013) Perceived usefulness, ease of

use, and attitude towards online shopping usefulness towards online airlines ticket

purchase is related to the topic of this paper. The study is mainly all about evaluating the

consumer attitudes towards the usability of online shopping taking into consideration

their perceived ease of use and usefulness towards online shopping and trust. They

choose airline ticketing as an example to explore the objective. Fortunately, the perceived

usefulness, perceived ease of use, and trust – all three influence attitudes towards online

airlines ticketing usability, positively. Although their research did not emphasize buying

online game products, they share some business elements. This research paper will use

their research data as a related literature in finding the perspective of the respondents.

Trust was investigated further in commercial transactions, from which

microtransactions are a part of. To be highlighted here is the importance of recurring

transactions which establish trust between both parties – the more transactions performed

between the parties involved, the higher the level of trust will be (Orzil & Andalécio,

2013). On the other hand, a sense of opportunism in a transaction can negatively impact

trust. This infers that trust between both parties, resulting from the feeling of a secured

information, are essential to be considered in finding the perspective of the respondents.

 A study made by Yoo (2015), the Consumer Perceived Value model garnered that

the higher the perceived value of items by gamers, the higher the probability of them

purchasing items. Emotional, social and functional monetary values were found to

correlate positively with purchase intentions of items. Functional value of performance,

on the other hand, did not and it even had the opposite effect of detracting from

purchasing intention. Additionally, impulse purchases or buying in general can also be

influenced by other elements such as social visibility, cultural factors and personality (Yu

& Bastin, 2010). Other reasons to buy online game products include locked content

wherein the user has access to the game for free up until a certain point until the user will

then need to pay to unlock more gameplay content. Usually all features remain the same

and the user can still access all previous content, he merely pays for more story

progression or extra levels (Newlands, 2015; Munir, 2014). Lastly, the decorative or

cosmetics attributes of a product are also part of the reasons in buying the product. Thus,

reasons in buying an online game product is important in finding the perspective of the

respondents.

If costumers are satisfied with the product and its perceived quality, they will

develop higher loyalty towards the brand and consequently a positive brand image

(Halim et al, 2014). Satisfied customers give a free pass to the following two barriers.

The barriers are the lack of direct contact between the customer and enterprise and the

inability of seeing, touching or testing/trying a product (Kułyk & Michałowska, 2016).

Customer’s satisfaction makes the barrier of lacking direct contact with the seller
ineffective to a large extend. Additionally, when consumers are purchasing virtual goods

or services – a common microtransaction purpose in game-driven applications – they

likely know exactly what they will purchase with the transaction and thus are well

informed. On top of that, microtransactions tend to happen mostly inside applications or

software, meaning consumers are already familiarized with the product and need to have

used it before already. As such, the second barrier, which is the inability of seeing,

touching or testing a product does not necessarily apply, more so because the goods are

not physical and cannot be touched and every user can easily see what they look like and

what they will offer or grant before buying. This literature will serve as proof that

customer’s satisfaction is an important factor in finding the perspective of people about

buying online game products.

Users’ perceptions of importance and continued usage were found to vary across

demographic groups based on gender, age, education and income (budget). Younger, less

educated and lower-income users are expected to decrease their time on Facebook next

year compared with older, more educated and higher-budgeted users. Thus, the data

gathering of this research will include demographic profile, as this factor is significant in

a perspective study. Facebook and online products may be different in their purpose but

they are considerably very close to each other as facebook also is an online game

platform.

Statement of the Problem

 This study will address the problem of identifying the perspective of Grade 12

students about buying online game products. The researcher came up with this problem

as he observed that numerous students are familiar with online games. Being familiarized

with online game products, the students must have a perspective about buying it. The

classified variables that are used in this study are the following: perceived usefulness on

buying the product, perceived reasons on buying the product, perceived satisfaction on

buying the product, perceived information security on buying the product, and perceived

ease of buying the product.

Research Questions

 What is the perspective of Grade 12 students about buying online game products?

Specific Questions:

1. What is the demographic profile of the Grade 12 student respondents?

2. How do the Grade 12 students see the concept of buying online game products in

terms of the following variables?

2.1 Reasons in buying the online game product

2.2 Information Security in buying the online game product

2.3 Ease in buying the online game product

2.4 Satisfaction in buying the online game product

2.5 Usefulness in buying the online game product

Research Hypothesis/Assumption
  What is the perspective of Grade 12 students about buying online game products?

H0: The Grade 12 students have a negative perspective about buying online game
products.
H1: The Grade 12 students have a positive perspective about buying online game
products.

Conceptual/ Theoretical Framework

The perspective of grade 12 students about buying online game products consists

of the following six variables below. These six variables below are significant in

determining people’s perspective about buying in general. The research paradigm below

shows the whole concept of the study consisting of the title and variables of study

Demographic
Profile
Perceived
Perceived information
ease of buying security on
a product buying the
product
Perspective of Grade
12 Student about
buying online game
products

Perceived Perceived
usefulness of satisfaction on
buying a buying a
product product
Perceived
reasons on
buying a
product
 Figure 1: Research Paradigm

Scope and Limitation/Delimitation

This research paper only focused on the perspective of grade 12 students on

buying online game product. Only one grade level was surveyed to collect the data of this

study. The population sample was also limited by using the Slovin’s formula. Lastly, the

variables of perspective is limited to only five which are: usefulness on buying the

product, reasons on buying the product, customer’s satisfaction on buying the product,

information security on buying the product, and the ease of buying the product.

Research Locale

The research is completely done on one area of interest which is the school

premise of International Philippine School in Al-Khobar. The school is located in Al-

Khobar, Saudi Arabia and Directed by Filipino and Saudi officials.

Significance of the Study

Almost all grade 12 students encounter or familiar with online gaming products.

Encounters always leaves a first impression in our minds therefore everyone who are

familiar with it must have a perspective about these products. Their perspective about
these products should help different enterprise/people. Considering that, this study should

be considered useful and significant for the following:

Gaming Companies. This study will be significant to gaming companies to make profit

by appealing to their customer target, which are mostly students. Appeal to them by

considering their perspective about the products you are selling and use this information

to create new ideas for a new upgraded product.

Online Game Products Buyers. This study will prove useful to online game products

buyers by providing solid information to what perspective should these be buyers focused

to. Depending on the situation, it’s either be usefulness on buying the product, reasons on

buying the product, customer’s satisfaction on buying the product, information security

on buying the product, and the ease of buying the product.

Future researchers. This study can serve as guide to the future researchers if by chance

their research contains the same concept of study. This can be served as a related

literature or reference for their research.

Definition of Terms

To improve the reader’s understanding of the research, the researchers provided

definitions in different terminologies on how it is used in this study. The terminologies

are the following:

The “Microtransactions” are defined as payment of an amount of money that is

performed online within a game-like environment, mostly on mobile.

The “Online game merchandise” are products that can be described as a real materialized

product coming from a game.

The “Online game sponsored accessories” are products that are sponsored by online

gaming companies to show approval of legitimacy of the product.

The “Online game accounts” are products of other players which are sold to the online

market exclusively because of the unique content this specific account contains.

The “Online game Elo rating boosting services” are services of other online gaming

companies that helps players of MOBA games to increase their ELO rating.

The “Virtual equipment” are products within a game that is designed to help a player by

equipping it into a character or an account.

The “Information Security” is a field of security involving the information of online users

The “Virtual Goods” are products which are found within a virtual environment
The “Value” is the opinion of a person’s own point of view on a product based on the

functional characteristics, monetary characteristics, social characteristics, and

psychological characteristics.

The “Functional monetary value” are a combination of functional and monetary values

The “Emotional value” also termed as psychological value, are the extent of owning a

product that allows consumers to express themselves or feel better.

The “Social Value” are the extent of owning a product or engaging in a service that

allows the consumer to connect with others.

The “Functional Value” is the type of value wherein the true purpose of the product is

recognized by the consumer

The “Monetary Value” is the type of value where the function of the price paid is relative

to a product’s perceived worth.

The “Decorative or cosmetics attributes” are the attributes of a product that provides a

more appealing appearance to a character or a game environment.

The”Reasons of buying” are pushing factors to consumers that drive them to buy any product

The” Information Security” is defined as a safe condition of an information based on privacy

The “Ease of buying” is a condition wherein buying is measured based on the effort exerted

The “Satisfaction” is a measurable quantity that measures the contentment of a person

The “Usefulness” is a measurable quantity that measures the functionality of a product