Electronic games: Can they create value for the moderate drinking brand?

Purpose – This paper aims to understand how experiential value can generate awareness, image, perceived quality and loyalty to the moderate drinking brand. Electronic games are increasingly used by social marketers in an attempt to support target audiences uptake of social behaviours. However, little is known of the value this creates for target audiences and its impact on the uptake of a social behaviour brand. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of male adolescents (n = 137) was conducted to test proposed relationships between experiential value and consumer-based brand equity dimensions. The research tested the game “Don’t Turn a Night Out into a Nightmare” that was developed by the Australian Federal Government as part of a social marketing campaign. Data were analysed using linear regression and MANCOVA. Findings – The findings indicate that there are significant relationships between consumer-based brand equity dimensions for the social behaviour brand of moderate drinking, indicating relevance of a commercial marketing theory for social marketing. Furthermore, findings show that different combinations of experiential value dimensions have an impact on different components of consumer-based brand equity. These findings indicate that when social marketers are developing electronic games, they must create different combinations of value in game play to achieve awareness, positive image, high perceived quality and, ultimately, loyalty to a behaviour. Practical implications – Social marketers seeking to use electronic games to influence the uptake of behaviour brands such as moderate drinking must provide a more complete value package. Originality/value – This paper is the first to examine how experiential value can influence the creation of brand equity for a social behaviour brand.