Abstract

In this study, we look at one of the most common components of videogames (aggression brought upon by violent stimulus) and how that affects the impression of an advertised brand (brand placement within the game) and the gamer’s responses to a related brand failure scenario. In this study, findings suggest that there are clear differences in the interpretation of the stimuli with regards to film and videogames.
The subjects watched a video of a modified version of the PC game “Halflife 2” where they were exposed to different brand cues throughout the gameplay experience and were tested in several ways. In a laboratory experiment the degree of violence (high vs. low) and the attribution of brand failure (internal vs. external) were manipulated. The dependent variable was various reactions to the observed scenario.
Results indicated that higher levels of violence led to lower levels of brand recall while it was not affected by the respondent’s enjoyment of the stimuli nor their attitude towards the brand. There was also evidence that female subjects had an easier time remembering the brands than male subjects did. It was found that there were 2 2-way interactions effect between violence level, brand failure attribution and gender with respect to anger; female subjects scored higher than male subjects in anger and desire for revenge across all manipulation combinations. Not only that but male and female subjects differed in terms of their level of anger relative to the source of service failure attribution (women had a stronger negative reaction to internal attribution). Although some explanations involving possible biological and behavioural gender differences can be suggested for the observed differences further studies are needed to pin down the reasons for the differences.