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The primary research question is how marketing is done for virtual goods in F2P games and how marketing influences consumers´ past purchase decision and future purchase intention. In particular it is argued if a traditional model like the marketing mix (4Ps) is suitable and rather effective for shaping the games´ vendors offerings for the players. For this purpose this research studies both, the producers´ perspective regarding the development studios´ perspective of marketing of virtual goods and the consumers´ perspective regarding the players´ perception of the applied marketing mix for virtual goods. Therefore two kinds of empirical approaches were chosen: (1) Explorative, qualitative interview with eleven German F2P games´ professionals to get producers´ perspective, and (2) a quantitative cross-sectional online survey collecting data about demographic data, F2P preferences, and perception of marketing mix components drawing a convenience sample by over 400 consumers of virtual goods.

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Frank Gwosdz holds a Diploma degree in computer science and an MBA. He is an entrepreneur and founded a couple of software companies.Prof. Dr. Thomas Dobbelstein runs the market research institute Customer Research 42. He is Prof at Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University in Ravensburg.

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