Theme 4: Quantitative research - Pre-reflection

Chosen article:

An exploratory study of factors influencing repurchase behaviors toward game items: A field study
Lee, J., Lee, J., Lee, H., Lee, J., Computers in Human Behaviour 53 (2015) 13-23. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215004574


This article studies what factors influence online game item purchases and especially repurchase behaviours. The intention is to understand what factors that trigger a repurchasing behaviour of online game items. To accomplish this the authors base their research on 2,060,685 observations of online game purchases made from a game company. The observations revealed various different factors that affected purchasing behaviours such as recency of purchase, purchase frequency and purchase cycle. These findings lead to the statement that “unconscious” purchase behaviours, immersion, impulse purchases and habits, should be further analyzed.


The main quantitative method used in this this article was, as briefly described above, the massive about of observations and statistics of online purchases acquired from the game company. By using this method, the paper gained a new perspective to the area of online game purchasing behaviours since this was the first time a highly statistical method was used. Similar and earlier studies had mainly used questionnaires or qualitative methods such as interviews. But due to the load of data that was collected, the authors were able to see other trends and draw new conclusions to how purchasing behaviours appear. The downside with questionnaire is that there is no guarantee that the subjects answer 100 % correct since their perception of their purchases might not actually concur with the actual purchase behaviour.


What limited this study was that the game company they received data from, actually had a database of 84,434,287 observations from online game purchases. That is more than 40 times more observations than what was actually used and there was no explanation why they had limited their study to only 2,060,685 observations. If the entire amount of observations had been used, the results had of course been more precise. The trends and conclusions the paper reached might even had looked different. It would also have been interesting to see statistics from another game company. By only using this one, the data was obviously quite narrow and thereby inclined the results.


Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality

The paper conducted a study of how react to and behave when exposed to and interacting with an Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR). That is, virtual reality taken one step further, giving the user a deeper experience through, in this case, a new personal body or bodily characteristics. This body replaces your and stimulates your own, real life body, as you interact in the virtual reality. All with the intention to create a higher sense of “being there”.


The key points of the paper was to investigate who this kind of interaction affects us. And more precisely, if our virtual representation of a body differs from our real body as well as if or when we interact with objects typically more associated with that new and varying body. Even though I’ve tried VR before and at one occasion even IVR with a simulated body I can not relate to feeling any substantial behavioural difference or even cognitive consequences as found in some cases of their study. At least not any variations that I was aware of. But after having read and thought about this experiment, I think that the next time I experience IVR, my awareness of what I am experiencing will be different and that my interaction might adapt to what I interacting with in the virtual reality.


Before choosing whether to use quantitative or qualitative methods for your research, you should investigate what you plan to achieve. A quantitative method constitutes of large numbers of data, often without any particular selection. It is used to generalize results from a sample of the entire dataset which is then used to construct a statistical analysis. That analysis can often indicate trends and thereby point towards a final course of action. Qualitative methods, are instead based on few but thorough investigations, often in the form of interviews. These methods are used to gain a deeper understanding for motives, thoughts and opinions. The findings are seldom conclusive and are not suitable to serve as a representation or generalization within the topic. Instead, the qualitative methods can be used to indicate the next step, what needs further investigation.