e-스포츠의 다양한 속성이 유동(flow)과 동일시에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

A Study on the Various Attributes of E-Sport Influencing Flow and Identification

인터넷의 급속한 발달과 온라인 사용이 급증함에 따라 e-스포츠와 같은 온라인 게임은 거대한 시장으로 성장하고 있다. 그렇지만, 많은 e-스포츠를 후원하는 기업의 효과를 검증하는 마케팅적 연구는 미진한 상태이다. 있다해도 단순히 온라인 게임과 관련한 연구가 대다수이다. 이에 본 연구는 e-스포츠 스폰서십을 통해 기업의 마케팅 커뮤니케이션 전략 수립을 위한 토대를 마련코자 하였으며 시작단계에 있는 e-스포츠의 향후 연구에 기여하고자 하였다. 중요 변수들은 첫째, e-스포츠의 주요한 게임속성으로 상호작용성, 익명성, 내용확장성을 들고 온라인 상황에서 주요한 매개의 역할로 다루어지는 유동(flow)과의 관계를 살펴보았다. 둘째, e-스포츠의 주요한 게이머속성(스포츠 경기에서의 팀과 플레이어의 속성에서 수정)인 매력성, 유사성, 경기결과가 유동(flow)과 게이머동일시(온라인 게임상황에 맞게 기존 팀동일시를 게이머동일시로 차용)에 미치는 영향관계를 살펴보았다. 마지막으로 유동(flow)과 게이머동일시와의 관계 그리고 게이머동일시와 기업동일시와의 관계를 최종적으로 점검하였다. 연구의 결과, 온라인의 기초적인 특성인 상호작용성은 유동(flow)에 유의한 영향이 있었고 게이머속성에서의 유사성과 경기결과도 유동(flow)에 유의한 영향이 있었다. 그리고 유사성은 게이머동일시에 정의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 마지막으로 유동(flow)은 게이머동일시에 그리고 게이머동일시는 기업동일시에 정의 영향이 있는 것으로 나타났다. 결론적으로 e-스포츠를 후원하는 기업의 경우 일반 유저들과 유사한 특성인 가진 실력있는 게이머를 후원한다면 마케팅 효과를 극대화할 수 있다.

Recently, e-sports are growing with potentiality as a new industry with conspicuous profit model. But studies that dealing with e-sports are not enough. Hence, proposes of this paper are both to establish basic model that is for the design of e-sport marketing strategy and to contribute toward future studies which are related to e-sports. Recently, the researches to explain sports-sponsorship through the identification theory have been discovered. Many researches say that somewhat proper identification is a requirement for most sponsors to improve the their images which is essential to sponsorship activity. Consequently, the research for sponsorship associated with identification in the e-sports, not in the physical sports is the core sector of this study. We extracted the variables from online's major characteristics and existing sport sponsorship researches. First, because e-sports mean the tournaments or leagues in the use of online game, the main event of the game is likely to call it online game. Online media's attributes are distinguished from those of offline. Especially, interactivity, anonymity, and expandibility as a e-sport game attributes are able to be mentioned. So, these inherent online attributes are examined on the relationship with flow. Second, in physical sports games, Fisher(1998) revealed that team similarity and team attractivity were positively related to team identification. Wann(1996) said that the result of former game influenced the evaluation of the next game, then in turn has an effect on the identification of team supporters. Considering these results in the e-sports side, e-sports gamer' attractivity, similarity, and match result seem to be important precedent variables of the identification with a gamer. So, these e-sport gamer attributes are examined on the relationship with both flow and identification with a gamer. Csikszentmihalyi(1988) defined the term flow as feeling status for him to be making current positive experience optimally. Hoffman and Novak(1996) also said that if a user experienced the flow he would visit a website without any reward. Therefore flow might be positively associated with user's identification with a gamer. And, Swanson(2003) disclosed that team identification influenced the positive results of sponsorship, which included attitude toward sponsors, sponsor patronage, and satisfaction with sponsors. That is, identification with a gamer expect to be connected with corporation identification significantly. According to the above, we can design the following research model. All variables used in this study(interactivity, anonymity, expandibility, attractivity, similarity, match result, flow, identification with a gamer, and identification with a sponsor) definitely were defined operationally underlying precedent researches. Sample collection was carried out to the person who has an experience to have enjoyed e-sports during June 2006. Much portion of samples is men because much more men than women enjoy e-sports in general. Two-step approach was used to test the hypotheses. First, confirmatory factor analysis was committed to guarantee the validity and reliability of variables. The results showed that all variables had not only intensive and discriminant validity, but also reliability. Then, research model was examined with fully structural equation using LISREL 8.3 version. The fitness of the suggested model mostly was at the acceptable level. Shortly speaking about the results, first of all, in e-sports game attributes, only interactivity which is called a basic feature in online situation affected flow positively. Secondly, in e-sports gamer's attributes, similarity with a gamer and match result influenced flow positively, but there was no significant effect in the relationship between the attractivity of a gamer and flow. And as expected, similarity had an effect on identification with a gamer significantly. But unexpectedly attractivity and match result did not influence identification with a gamer significantly. Just the same as the fact verified in the many precedent researches, flow greatly influenced identification with a gamer, and identification with a gamer continually had an influence on the identification with a sponsor significantly. There are some implications in these results. If the sponsor of e-sports supports the pro-game player who absolutely should have the superior ability to others and is similar to the user enjoying e-sports, many amateur gamers will feel much of the flow and identification with a pro-gamer, and then after all, feel the identification with a sponsor. Such identification with a sponsor leads people enjoying e-sports to have purchasing intention for products produced by the sponsor and to make a positive word-of-mouth for those products or the sponsor. For the future studies, we recommend a few ideas. Based on the results of this study, it is necessary to find new variables relating to the e-sports, which is not mentioned in this study. For this work to be possible, qualitative research seems to be needed to consider the inherent e-sport attributes. Finally, to generalize the results related to e-sports, a wide range of generations not a specific generation should be researched.