Investigating the Effect of Word of Mouth Advertising on the Growth Rate of the Number of Mobile Game ‎Users in Iran

The growing demand for computer games, especially mobile games, has encouraged many developers to produce and release a variety of these games. Game developers have attractive ideas for producing a mobile game, and often technically it can be produced in the country, but the main problem is the product delivery and marketing. This paper examines the impact of key decision-making parameters on mobile gaming marketing, such as the investment, quality of word of mouth advertising, satisfaction, loyalty and user preferences, on game installation and profitability. Modeling and simulation were performed using the system dynamics method and the results of sensitivity analysis indicated that the profit and active installation of mobile game is highly sensitive to the initial capital, the view price, the in-app payments and the rate of customer acquisition, and the game’s ad-absorbing rate. It was less sensitive to legal reserve rates and consumer preferences. Also, word of mouth advertising increased the profitability of the game by increasing the game’s installation rate, and the quality by reducing the uninstallation rate. Another interesting result from the modeling was that game developers would not gain more profit if they entered the preferred genre, as other competitors entered the field and the market share was shared among market developers.