Groups of Gamers: Market Segmentation of Brazilian Electronic Gamers

The electronic games industry is a new, dynamic, and fast-growing economic sector. However, organizations in this industry do not know the profile of their consumers. In view of this knowledge gap, the objective of this research paper is to analyze groups of electronic games consumers in the Brazilian market, in terms of their socio-demographic, behavioral, and expenditure characteristics. Using market segmentation literature and motivational variables found in games literature, this paper uses self-organizing maps and analysis of variance to segment 601 Brazilian gamers. The results demonstrate the existence of five different groups of games players and that, in order to reach each group, different strategies need to be used. The first group consists of t players who play all the time. The second has the same features as the first, but they do not have the same amount of time available to play. The third group consists of pro players. The fourth group and fifth group are the new challenge for games companies.