Interrogating The Factors That Affect Online Game Customers' Selection And Preference

Since 2010, the Chinese online game market had almost saturated. Under such circumstances, the research on niche market which pinpoints consumer's specific needs is of vital importance to attract and retain consumers. Researches on consumers'selection trends and behavior analysis therefore enable business firms to approach and captivate loyal customers; such studies deserve significance in academia as well as real-world business planning.This article begins with the behavioral analysis of online game users and the characteristics of web-based games to identify the influential factors that dictate consumers'selection and preference, seeking to solve the following problems: 1. how personal needs, past experience and word-of-mouth can explain consumer expectations, 2. how pricing and insufficiency/uselessness perception of online games correlate to customer satisfaction, 3. the correspondence of online game user's selection behavior to actual consumption. 4. Strategic advice on the development of online game firms.Based on relevant theoretical studies, this article constructs a model of consumer behavior of online game users by statistical analysis of data obtained from surveys to verify assumptions and postulates, and the following conclusions can be drawn: 1. based on expectancy theories, the causality of expectancy-deviation is not directly affected by worsening word-of-mouth, however, it is indirectly influenced by the insufficiency/uselessness perception, which disprove the significance of previous studies which based on personal need, past experience and word-of-mouth. There is also an indirect correlation between pricing and expectancy-deviation due to insufficiency/uselessness perception. 2. based on the studies of planning behavior analysis, online game customer satisfaction and perception behavior control, respectively, correlate with expected word-of-mouth and perceptive pricing.