The Impact Of Online Word-of-mouth On Overseas Sales Of Chinese Mobile Game

The improvement of the convenience of communication in the Internet age has made public opinions of the decentralized network break the monopoly of traditional media.“Everyone is an opinion leader” has pushed the role of word of mouth to a new level,and a network of light-speed transmission is built its sender and the receiver,carrying the information of products and services,reducing the risks of consumers’ information asymmetry.Consumer reviews of online stores,as a form of online word of mouth,expand the traditional B2 C information disseminated into a C2 C form with network effects,enabling consumers to have a forward-looking understanding of experiential products and services through online word of mouth.It also achieved a wider coverage of target customers with the help of Word-of-mouth marketing.Therefore,the academic circle has set off a research boom on the Word-of-mouth effect.With the large-scale promotion of 4G and the increase in the penetration rate of smartphones,the mobile game market has expanded rapidly.Under the background that the domestic market tends to be saturated and the growth rate is slowing down,it has become an industry’s consensus for mobile games to compete for the blue ocean market.According to Sensor Tower data,a total of 42 Chinese mobile games generated more than 100 million US dollars revenue in overseas market in 2021,that is 5 more added on the basis of 2020.The relatively low penetration rate in overseas markets has given related companies and their product with considerable room for growth.Based on the background,this paper starts from the overseas performance of Chinese mobile games,and conducts an empirical study on the influence of Online Word-of-mouth on game sales and the moderating effect of genre popularity.By reviewing the literature,the previous research results were sorted out,focusing on the theory and literature related to Word-of-mouth and performance,and the impact of Word-of-mouth on product performance.Based on this relationship,a theoretical model of the study was constructed,and then relevant hypotheses were put forward.The original data obtained from the Apple App Store interface and the estimated data from the algorithm simulation were collected from mainstream mobile app store data statistics websites at home and abroad as the research.sample of empirical analysis.Finally,data analysis software was used to analyze and test,and two conclusions were drawn: First,Online word of mouth has a significant positive impact on mobile game sales,which is mainly caused by the number of Word-of-mouth rather than Word-ofmouth scores;second,Genre popularity plays a moderating role in the above Word-ofmouth effect.In the overseas sales of Chinese mobile games,Online Word-of-mouth mainly promotes sales by increasing the awareness of consumers and potential consumers.There are differences in the popularity of game categories in different countries or regions,and popularity will weaken the awareness effect of word of mouth.In addition,there is also a certain gravity model for mobile games to go overseas,and the Word-of-mouth effect will also be affected by location factors.This is the exploratory finding of this study in the field of international business.In recent years,research on Chinese games going overseas has gradually emerged,but more in the fields of industrial economy or international trade,and there are relatively few empirical studies based on Online Word-of-mouth or social media marketing.This paper makes up for the shortcomings of the existing research on the Word-of-mouth phenomenon of emerging cultural industries,and at the same time has some innovations in research perspectives and research methods,using theories in the field of international business,and introducing genre popularity as a moderator variable,using different samples for cross-validation,the conclusion is more general,and it also provides a new idea for follow-up research.The management inspiration brought by this article is that game developers or publishers need to pay more attention to online Word-of-mouth,especially the number of Word-of-mouth.Cultural differences and other location factors should be taken into account,and depicting user portraits should be adopted by those marketing strategies.