The Research Of The Influence Of Customer-Perceived Factors To Customer Loyalty In Social Online Games

Since the birth of Facebook in the dorm of Harvard University upon the date Feb4th2004, a global tide of Social Network Service has swept through and lots of SNS sites have sprung up. Under this background, social online games have then become an emerging market in online game industry in the past few years.Despite of the explosive growth, social game industry is also experiencing some bottlenecks, many social games are suffering from high churn rate and low paying rate. Thus it has been a common issue for social game companies as how to enhance the customer’s loyalty. There’s a quote from Peter Drucker, known as the Father of Modern Management, the demand of customers is the center and the starting point of the entire enterprise activities. Since the1990s, the research about the role of Customer-Perceived Value in the enterprise competitive advantages has been carried out in both academic scope and business market.Based on the research of predecessors, this paper studies the impact of social game CPV (Functional Value, Hedonic Value, Social Value, Emotional Value, Monetary Cost, Non-Monetary Cost) on Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. Theories from Management Science, Marketing, Behavior Science and related fields are involved in this paper. Adopting the methods of literature research and empirical study, the research result of this paper indicates that functional value, hedonic value, emotional value and non-monetary cost have direct positive impact on customer satisfaction; social value and monetary cost have no significant direct impact on customer satisfaction; functional value, monetary cost and non-monetary cost have direct positive impact on customer loyalty; social value and emotional value have no significant direct impact on customer loyalty; hedonic value has direct negative impact on customer loyalty; functional value and non-monetary cost have significant mediating effect on continued usage intention; customer satisfaction has direct positive effect on customer loyalty; customer gender has significant impact on the differences of customer-perceived value to customer loyalty in social online games.The research results in this paper have practical meaning for social online game developers and operators, because they can enhance customer satisfaction and customer loyalty by properly managing customer-perceived values.