Specifics of the digital marketing strategies in the video games industry in different countries exemplified by Ubisoft

Moreover, it is vital to focus marketing efforts on channels that customers frequently use. This allows the company to provide targeted digital marketing tactics to its players as well as allowing it to be seen as a leader within the space by truly understanding their target audience. It is important for a company to bear in mind the significance of understanding the platform of their target audience or to exclude the possibility of a risk and a media collapse.

Finally, study Ubisoft Russia showed us that companies of that kind tend to stick to an glocalization strategy. The application of the adaptation strategy in the company is connected with the need to adapt to the peculiarities of the huge number of foreign markets in which the company successfully operates and consider various limitations.

3.3 Limitations of the study and propositions for the future studies

One important limitation to note boils down to the fact that the most successful video games marketing in Russia is coming from the U.S.-based companies that localize and implement their own marketing campaigns into the Russian market with the account of some limits described in the paper. It was rather challenging to carry out an in-depth analysis of the marketing strategies for the video games born in Russia. However, the research has helped to indicate the existing problem of the video games industry in Russia and its marketing strategies, correspondingly.

Another major challenge was linked to finding certain data. Most of companies tend to keep their data on strategy related matters strictly confidential, for example, proportional budget spread by digital marketing channels in different region and other data of this kind. That would allow us to find the ground for such a spread and identify reasons for such decision-making.

One more limitation that has been encountered is that there is no solely right way of assessing the digital success of a gaming company. Sometimes, the return on marketing investment is difficult to reflect and it might be rather challenging to track what exactly was the reason that caused a certain result: a conscious marketing effort or spontaneous social activity caused by heated debate about the game. The topic was quite challenging to work on as it is not often investigated especially with regards to the Russian market, so choosing the right way to estimate the data was quite tough.

Apart from that, it is definitely worth highlighting the video game industry as well as digital marketing are the areas growing with rapid speed. They are firmly connected and often inseparable. And they both raise a number of opportunities for future research due to its constant and swift development. As much as nowadays traditional marketing tools may not be so efficient in some markets, some of the digital marketing strategies we name in this work may not be as demanded and effective in the future as now, too. It might be interesting to further investigate the way marketing evolves over time in different regions and what factors lie on the ground of choosing one or another set of marketing campaigns when building a digital marketing strategy.

Conclusion

In this research, we have carried out an analysis of the Russian video games market and compared it to the different countries such as the U.S, China, France, Germany and identified differences between digital marketing strategies for distinct markets and presented the factors that are in essence the major impacts for those strategies' development and implementation.

The first chapter of the paper was devoted to examining the essence of digital marketing strategies and their role in context of the video games industry. We have conceptualized the role of digital marketing for modern businesses, establish an understanding of digital marketing strategies and figured out the specifics of digital marketing strategies implementation in various industries as well.

In the second chapter, we have led the analysis of the digital marketing strategies in the American, Russian, French, German and Chinese gaming industries by analysing their current state of in the given countries, taking a look at Ubisoft digital marketing strategies introduced in France and Russia and overviewing the most prominent marketing practices in the video games industry.

In the final chapter, we have summarized the results of the study, formulated relevant conclusions and presented recommendations for digital marketing strategy development in Russia, proving and rejecting the hypotheses set in the introduction.

We have ascertained that global video games developing companies in Russia are not yet established and most of the digital marketing content related to PC and console video games comes from the global strategies that are localized, adapted and adjusted for the Russian reality with the careful account of existing limitations, social and political specifics.

However, it is not just content that has to be adjusted when introducing it to the Russian customer. It is also important to deeply examine the local distribution channels and actively utilize them in order to reach as many potential and existing customers as possible. We have also established that the proportion of budget spread for different digital channels allocation differs depending on the region.

The major differences, however, were mostly related to adapting the digital marketing campaigns with respect to local specifics and peculiarities, which have been discussed in this work in context of Russian and the U.S. video games markets. Taking all that into consideration, we may conclude that the primary goal of this paper has been met.

Reference List

1. Ali Jones. Fortnite made $126m in February, making more than PUBG for the first time. PCGames. (2018). Retrieved April 6, 2019 from

2. Altrage. 3 Kickass Digital Marketing Lessons from GTA 5. (2013, February). Retrieved March 10, 2019 from

3. Big Drop. 5 Industries Getting The Most ROI From Digital Marketing. (2018, February). Retrieved April 10, 2019

4. BigTime.Ventures. Маркетинг в медицине: его особенности и примеры использования (2017). Retrieved April 17, 2019

5. Blake J. Harris. (2014). Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation

6. Brainbridge W. S. (2010). The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in Virtual World. MIT Press.

7. Brammer H. Gamers Abroad. (2016). HSE Library e-resources. Retrieved April 15, 2019

8. Chaffey, D. & Smith P.R. (2017). Digital Marketing Excellence: Planning, Optimizing, and Integrating Online Marketing. New York: Routledge.

9. Chandigarh Institute of Internet Marketing. Benefits of Digital marketing for Event & Entertainment Industry (2019). Retrieved April 17, 2019 from

10. Cossa. Как открыть бизнес в киберспорте и не облажаться. Опыт Павла Голубева (2018, June). Retrieved April 20, 2019 from

11. Costa M. (2010). Customer Engagement Improves Brand Profits. Marketing Week

12. Dave Chaffey and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick “Digital Marketing. 2016.

13. Davis, J. A. (2018). Measuring Marketing. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

14. Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations

15. InternetWorldStats - The Number of Internet Users 2017. (2018, March). Retrieved August 20, 2019 from

16. Linchpin SEO Team. The Ultimate Sports Marketing Guide. (2018). Retrieved April 12, 2019 from

17. Martн-Parreсo J. Product Placement in Video Games: The Effect of Brand Familiarity and Repetition on Consumers' Memory. (2016). HSE Library e-resources. Retrieved April 16, 2019 from

18. Peter Zackariasson and Mikolaj Dymek "Video Games marketing". 2017.

19. Pikabu - Почему я не покупаю лицензионные игры. (2014). Retrieved August 18, 2019 from

20. Pikabu. “Blizzard Must Answer!”: Russian Overwatch players are furious at the announcement of Soldier News 76. (2019). Retrieved April 6, 2019 from

21. Playground - Обращение на «ты» в современных играх. (2014, October). Retrieved August 18, 2019 from

22. Playground - Чем отличается лицензионная версия игры от пиратки. (2014, April). Retrieved August 18, 2019 from

23. Prodo Insights. Fortnite Frenzy: Does Fortnite Spell the Future of Marketing? (2018, May). Retrieved March 25, 2019 from

24. Schiller M. Transmedia Storytelling: New Practices and Audiences. (2018). HSE Library e-resources. Retrieved April 12, 2019 from

25. Shaw A. (2018, August). Digital Marketing Trends That Are Changing The Way We Market To Consumers. Retrieved April 10, 2019, from

26. Simon Kingsnorth, Digital marketing strategy: an integrated approach to online marketing. (2016)

27. Statista. (2019). Global digital population as of April 2019 (in millions). Retrieved March 5, 2019, from

28. Stephanie Diamond “Digital Marketing All-In-One”. 2019.

29. TalkWalker. Digital Marketing Strategy Guide. How to plan & execute, measure & analyse actionable steps, templates, checklists, and real-life examples. Retrieved March 10, 2019, from

30. The French Video Game Trade Association (SNJV), IDATE DigiWorld, Annual survey of the video game industry in France. 2020. Retrieved March 20, 2020 from

31. VC - Как изменится рынок интернет-пиратства России в 2019 году. (2019, February). Retrieved August 18, 2019 from

32. VC - Компьютерное пиратство в 2016 году. (2016, August). Retrieved August 18, 2019 from

33. Wang A. (2007). Branding over Mobile and Internet Advertising: The Cross-Media Effect. International Journal of Mobile Marketing

34. Waterloo. Blizzard Entertainment: Great Games, Better Customer Engagement. (2015, October). Retrieved March 25, 2019 from

35. Ветушинский А. (2015). To Play Game Studies - Press the START Button. Логос.

36. Константин Бойко-Романовский. Серьезные забавы: почему видеоигры становятся популярнее кино (2018, February). Forbes. Retrieved March 20, 2020

Размещено на Allbest.ru