Esports spectator motivation: A case study on CS:GO

• Autor(a) principal: Martinho, António Fernandes da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/38587
• topic: Digital world; Esports; CS:GO; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The digital world is increasingly becoming a focal point for companies to position themselves in order to gain the attention of their consumers. This is a world still underexplored, and the success of esports combined with the growth of its interested population (particularly among Millennials and Gen Z) shows that esports can be a place of new opportunities for companies to expose themselves and captivate their target audience. This research aims to understand the motivations of Portuguese consumers to watch esports (particularly the game Counter-Strike Global Offensive), to cluster them, and to correlate the motivation cluster with and the level of game engagement. Using the MSES scale to measure motivation, data were collected through a survey with 555 regular consumers of Counter-Strike Global Offensive, and main results show the existence of two clusters of consumers: one that values all the components of this motivation scale, emphasizing the socialization factors between consumers; and another that values equally these same motivations, but discards the importance of this social interaction between consumers. Also, data show that consumers who give more importance to social factors, tend to be more active in these gaming platforms and to invest more and make upgrades in their game inventories. Academical contribution of this thesis encompasses the validation of the MSES scale for the Portuguese consumers of esports. Yet, some managerial recommendation is provided, since knowing the motivations of these consumers becomes essential for marketing departments of companies that target these young consumers, in order to optimize their investments on esports.