Department of Business Administration International Business Program Degree Project, 30 Credits, Spring 2020 Supervisor: Galina Biedenbach
Contents ABSTRACT ...... 1 1. Introduction ...... 2 1.1 Choice of Subject ...... 2 1.2 Problem Background ...... 2 1.3 Twitch.tv ...... 4 1.4 Research Problem and Gaps ...... 6 1.5 Research Question ...... 10 1.6 Purpose ...... 10 2. Theoretical Framework ...... 11 2.1 Brands and Branding ...... 11 2.2 Personal Branding ...... 12 2.3 Personal Branding in the Perspective of a Twitch.tv Broadcaster ...... 12 2.4 Third places ...... 13 2.5 Virtual third places ...... 15 2.6 Virtual third places in a gaming setting ...... 16 2.7 Twitch.tv as a Virtual Third Place ...... 17 2.8 Outcomes of Personal Branding and Virtual Third places ...... 19 2.9 Brand Loyalty ...... 19 2.10 Customer Satisfaction and Delight ...... 21 2.11 Conceptual Model ...... 22 3. Scientific Methodology ...... 24 3.1 Ontology ...... 24 3.2 Epistemology ...... 24 3.3 Research Approach ...... 25 3.4 Research Design ...... 26 3.5 Pre-understandings ...... 27 3.6 Literature search ...... 28 3.7 Choice of Theories ...... 28 4. Practical Method ...... 31 4.1 Data Collection ...... 31 4.2 Sampling ...... 33 4.3 Transcribing ...... 35 4.4 Thematic Analysis ...... 35 5. Empirical Findings ...... 37 5.1 Profiles of Interviewees ...... 37 5.2 Personal Branding ...... 38 5.3 Virtual Third Places ...... 40 5.4 Interactions and Engagement ...... 43
5.5 Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction ...... 44 5.6 Loyalty ...... 45 5.7 Diffusion of Information ...... 46 5.8 Motivations to Watch / Stream ...... 47 5.9 Personality ...... 48 6. Analysis and Model Discussion ...... 50 6.1 Thematic Network Analysis ...... 50 6.2 Personal Branding ...... 52 6.3 Virtual Third Places ...... 53 6.4 Customer Satisfaction and Delight ...... 54 6.5 Brand Loyalty ...... 55 6.6 Model Discussion ...... Error! Bookmark not defined. 7. Conclusion ...... 57 7.1 General conclusions ...... 57 7.2 Theoretical contribution ...... 58 7.3 Implications for Streamers ...... 58 7.4 Societal Implications ...... 59 7.6 Truth Criteria ...... 59 7.7 Limitations and Future Research ...... 61 Reference List ...... 62 Appendix ...... 67
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ABSTRACT Personal branding has been central to the marketing field of study for the past few decades, as its flexibility has found a place in professional, academic, and social contexts. The relationship between loyalty and customer satisfaction has been explored throughout existing literature, where the concept of customer delight, or the act of exceeding customer expectations, has recently been the subject of many conversations regarding its effects on loyalty.
The main purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of the role that personal branding plays in relation to brand loyalty in the context of a virtual third place. We aimed to explore the outcomes of customer satisfaction and customer delight as the viewer’s emotional ties to the streamer’s brand, and their sense of belonging to the virtual third place assist in meeting and exceeding their expectations, and how these ultimately impact their desire to support the streamer. Personal branding, its effect on customer satisfaction and delight, and the outcome of loyalty can be of interest to streamers, and the attributes fostered in virtual third places can be important for society in general.
We identified a research gap in terms of live streaming in connection to personal branding, as well as the concept of virtual third places being rather unexplored. There is a need to research the outcomes of personal branding in the form of loyalty and customer satisfaction and delight, as the digital context we live in has opened the possibility to pursue a variety of careers, one being live streaming, shaped by one’s personal brand.
We have conducted a qualitative study in order to achieve the purpose of this thesis. We conducted a total of eleven semi-structured interviews with both streamers and viewers on the live streaming platform Twitch.tv. Through these interviews we gain deeper understanding on the central role that personality plays in a streamer’s personal brand, and how it is the leading driver for community interaction and engagement, as well as entertainment of viewers. The themes identified in our thematic network analysis were personal branding, virtual third places, customer satisfaction and delight, and brand loyalty. Our findings were summarized in a table that showcases the role of personality, as well as on a conceptual model that describes the interactions between each of the aforementioned themes.
We concluded that while there are some differences between viewer and streamer perception, a personality-based personal brand seems to be key in order to deliver customer satisfaction and delight, as well as to develop a loyal following. Furthemore, we also concluded that a streamer’s online community has the potential to align with the attributes required for a third place, making them a viable option to search for genuine and fulfilling social interaction.
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1. Introduction In this chapter we begin our thesis by explaining the way in which we selected the topic for our degree project. We then present the problems we have encountered and provide a brief background for the theories we have chosen as the groundwork for our thesis. We will conclude this chapter by stating our research question and the purpose that guides us throughout the thesis.
1.1 Choice of Subject We are two students of the Umeå School of Business, Statistics and Economics, in the fourth and final year of the International Business Program. Marco Guzman has experience in both the food industry as well as in the service and retail industry and an academic background in business development and entrepreneurship, whereas Marcus Widell has had work experience in the pharmaceutical industry in a marketing context. In addition to this, Marcus Widell has written a bachelor’s thesis on the effects of sponsorship in esports.
To find a research topic, we decided to frame a shared hobby in a business administration context. From this, we decided to look at live-stream broadcasters to investigate the ways personal branding enables customer loyalty, satisfaction, and delight to come together in the online communities that we both know and frequent. We believe this topic to be important since the amount of research in this specific area is very limited, even though live streaming has seen immense growth in recent years. In addition, significant amounts of value have begun moving from corporate sponsors and viewers to broadcasters which has prompted us to investigate the subject of live streaming. With this research, we hope to identify the aspects of personal branding that influences loyalty, satisfaction, and delight for broadcasters to cultivate within the virtual third places they manage in order to enable their success. From this, we hope to contribute to the gap in knowledge, as well as generating theoretical and practical implications for Twitch.tv broadcasters.
To investigate our research topic, we will utilize branding theories, focusing on personal branding, and explore customer loyalty through satisfaction and delight, as well as ground these in the context of the sociological concept of “third places”. These theories should allow us to investigate the online communities with a business perspective and thus make contributions to the realm of knowledge for live streaming.
1.2 Problem Background Live streaming is a unique form of social media characterized by its communication dynamics that combine highly precise video and graphics with text-based communication channels (Hamilton et al., 2014, p. 1315), with a majority of live streams being based around the playing of video games. At the time of writing, the biggest live streaming platform in the western market is Twitch.tv (also known solely as “Twitch), which has seen strong and steady growth since 2015 (TwitchTracker a, 2020) and thus was chosen to provide the empirical context for our study.
Live streaming has become a huge phenomenon, boasting 1.26 million concurrent viewers in 2019, with around 3.64 million monthly broadcasters on Twitch.tv alone (TwitchTracker a, 2020). People use Twitch.tv to stream themselves (from here on out people that stream will be referred to as ‘streamers’ or ‘broadcasters’ interchangeably) playing video games while viewers watch and interact with them through the IRC (internet relay chat) feature. Streamers 3
are free to stream almost whatever they like, whether it is a hot new game, a workout session, or even them walking around in real life. Streamers can categorise their stream which allows potential viewers to sort through the sites and pick what they would like to view.
In a research paper by Sjöblom and Hamari (2016) the authors conducted an online survey and managed to obtain 1097 responses. From these responses, the authors were able to visualize the demographic makeup of live streaming viewers. Unsurprisingly, 92.3% of the respondents were male, with the average age being 22 years old. A majority of these respondents were students (57.1%), followed by full-time workers (22.4%), the unemployed (10.3%), and lastly part-time workers (8.5%) (Sjöblom and Hamari, 2016 p. 989). Knowing the demographic makeup of the average Twitch viewer allows streamers to cater their content to these average viewers, as well as helping us as researchers understand who we will be studying.
On these streaming platforms there exist many different types of streamers. One type of streamer is someone who streams one specific game that they are known for. For example, a professional League of Legends (one of the most popular video games on Twitch.tv at the moment) player would solely stream League of Legends to viewers who either enjoy watching the streamer specifically or watch for information on how to play the game better. Another type of streamer is known as a ‘variety streamer’, someone who streams a variety of games or content (Marsden, 2019). These types of streamers usually attract viewers with their personality as viewers come to watch and interact with them instead of watching for the specific game they are playing. This wide array of profiles that streamers can slot into emphasizes the importance that personal branding has in the industry, as their need to position themselves in a way that clearly communicates and showcase who they are (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015 p. 183) to the potential viewers that frequent the platform is paramount to their success.
Managing their own personal brand to enable loyalty, satisfaction, and delight in the third place they create is important for streamers, especially if it is their full-time job, or if they aspire to become a dedicated full-time streamer. On Twitch.tv, and streaming platforms in general, there are four main ways of making money as a streamer: donations from viewers, subscriptions, playing advertisements during the stream, and sponsors. Viewers have the option to donate money to a streamer for whatever reason, whether it is because they are enjoying the stream or to take advantage of the donation message feature (Gros et al., 2017). Subscriptions come in the form of monthly payments (payments can be as low as $5 and as high as $50 a month) made by the viewer to the streamer which afford the viewer exclusive benefits and perks like emoticons for the chat feature and special chat channels for subscribers only. Advertisements played during a stream are only available for streamers with a high follower count. These advertisements are administered by Twitch and provide value to both the platform and the streamer based on how many viewers watched the ad. Lastly, streamers can make money through sponsors. Sponsorships can take almost any form, from a company sponsoring a streamer to use their products in their stream, to a company sponsoring a streamer to have a logo placed either on them on the stream itself. Typically, it is only the large streamers with a big viewer base that get sponsorships, but this can vary depending on company size and other such factors. Two major revenue streams for streamers, namely donations and subscriptions, rely on the viewer’s willingness to support the streaming. Therefore, influencing a customer’s loyalty through satisfaction and delight becomes central to their financial success and stability.
As we can see, personal branding is vital for broadcasters as it opens opportunities in both the social sense and financial sense. The importance of personal branding is further exemplified by a streamer called Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. In late 2017 Ninja’s Twitch.tv broadcast blew up 4
in terms of viewership and subscribers. This rise-to-fame can be attributed to Ninja streaming Fortnite, which gained mainstream recognition in late 2017. From there, Ninja managed to amass 188,000 subscribers (with each subscriber paying at least $4.99 each month) in 2018 (Leslie and Byers, 2020), with his average viewership peaking in April 2018 at 110,091 concurrent average viewers (TwitchTracker c, 2020). One of the reasons Ninja became so famous was because of his personality on stream and his immense level of talent in Fortnite. In addition to this, Ninja’s stream was very child friendly which attracted both a teenage and young adult viewership and a multitude of sponsors. With this ‘brand’, Ninja managed to secure sponsorship deals with Adidas, Microsoft, Hershey’s, Uber, and Red Bull (SponsorPitch - Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, 2020), as well as an exclusivity deal with Twitch.tv’s rival Mixer which is rumoured to be valued around $20 - $30 million over three years (Shaw and Kharif, 2019).
Digital transformation is a branch of digitalization that emphasizes not just the adoption of digital alternatives to simplify work, but the reframing of core business operations through digital means that ultimately affect the products, processes, and even structure of an organization (Matt et al., 2015). According to International Data Group (IDG), as of 2018 89% of organizations have or are aiming to adopt a digital-first strategy. When surveyed, the respondents made clear that digitalizing their organization was a complex process, but that it ultimately aimed to affect many areas of business from meeting customer expectations to enabling productivity and management (IDC, 2018, p. 2-3).
A core aspect of Twitch.tv and other streaming platforms is the chat feature, which allows viewers to interact with both the streamer and other viewers. This helps create a type of online community where people come to socialize with other like-minded individuals, and for many people it is the main reason they enjoy watching and participating in live streams. Gros et al., (2017) outlines the main reasons as to why people watch live-streamed content. Their research concluded the three main motivations are entertainment, information, and socialization. This helps prove that the viewers of live-streamed content see the live streaming platforms as both a place to view media but also as a space to socialize and seek genuine human interaction. Dux (2018) introduces the idea that viewers believe Twitch.tv is a virtual adaptation of a third place, a space that harbors sociability, non-discursive communication, and social leveling (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982), where viewers pursue gratification not only through specific streams but also the atmosphere of the stream and the chat created by the streamer.
We believe that due to the amount of people that use Twitch.tv, there is a need for more research so that consumers, content producers (streamers), and Twitch.tv itself can understand the industry to a better degree. To help prove this point, Shapiro and Aneja (2018) conducted a study on American Twitch streamers and their earnings. The results show that the streamers earned approximately $67 million in 2016 and approximately $87 million in 2017, a 30% increase (Shapiro and Aneja 2018). This shows the sheer amount of money that moves through Twitch.tv to American Twitch streamers alone, not mentioning the earnings for the non- American streamers on the platform.
1.3 Twitch.tv We have selected Twitch.tv as the empirical context of our thesis because it is the biggest live streaming platform in the Western market and it has experienced promising growth since its inception and continues to be unmatched in that regard by its competitors.
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Twitch.tv was founded in 2011 as a spin-off of Justin.tv, as the gaming audience within it grew to the extent where it was taking over the general interest streaming platform (Truong, 2014). Justin.tv, the parent company, shut down in 2014 and Twitch.tv was acquired by Amazon soon after for $970 Million (Kim, 2014). We have chosen TwitchTracker as our source of statistics since it is the most reliable statistical tool for Twitch.tv, as it obtains live data directly from Twitch’s network (through API access). Twitch.tv has dominated the western live streaming market ever since its acquisition, exhibiting tremendous growth over the latter half of the past decade, reaching an average of 1.26 Million concurrent viewers by the end of 2019 (TwitchTracker a, 2020). Twitch.tv has roughly 50 thousand unique live channels at any given time, and over 3.5 Million active monthly broadcasters (TwitchTracker a, 2020). Last year alone Twitch.tv totalled 660 billion minutes watched, which represents an 18% increase from 2018 (TwitchTracker a, 2020). This growth is rather impressive due to the massive increase between years 2017 and 2018, where Twitch.tv’s audience skyrocketed by 58% mostly due to the burst in popularity of Fortnite, a videogame that became extremely popular among young teenagers in the beginning of 2018 (Fortnite player Count, 2020). As recently as January 2020, Twitch.tv peaked in monthly viewers at 1.36 Million, and broke the 1 billion hours watched in a single month milestone (TwitchTracker a, 2020). All of this indicates that the industry, or Twitch.tv at the very least, is still experiencing rapid growth.
To explain the industry’s financial relevance, we looked at a study by Shapiro and Aneja (2018) where they estimate the earnings of U.S. content creators on several platforms, one of which is Twitch, over 2016 and 2017. While there are no direct financial statements available for Twitch.tv as they are a private company and within Amazon’s portfolio of companies, we believe that showcasing the amount of revenue generated through Twitch.tv as a platform brings some insight to the overall value that it generates. This study also only considered U.S. content creators, and while Twitch.tv is a very popular platform throughout the Western world, the U.S. is certainly where most of their audience resides. According to SimilarWeb, a popular online tool that measures a wide selection of attributes of the digital world, at least 36% of traffic comes from the U.S. (measured at 11:08 CET) and reach as high as 53% during peak hours (measured at 22:12 CET) (Similarweb.com, 2020). During 2016 content creators on Twitch.tv earned an estimate of $67 Million, which grew by roughly 30% the next year, nearing $87 Million (Shapiro and Aneja, 2018). This study encompasses data from 2016 and 2017, which, as mentioned above, is one year before the huge growth Twitch.tv experienced due to the upsurge in popularity of Fortnite, which certainly propelled many content creators into stardom, and therefore the revenue generated by them through Twitch.tv is definitely much higher.
In terms of design, Twitch can be best described as minimalistic and emphasizing clarity. Their home page, namely the one the viewer arrives at when entering the site, is titled “Discover” as it starts with a flashcard interface that showcases different streamers streaming different content for the viewer to discover (Appendix 2). By scrolling down Twitch provides different tailored recommendations ranging from live channels, categories, and specific streamers within that category (Appendix 2). The second tab is only available for registered users, meaning those who have created and logged in with their account, and it is titled “Following”. This tab consists of a list of all the streamers the viewer follows sorted by whether they are live as well as total view count (Appendix 2). A concise version of this tab can always be found to the left of the platform, regardless of what tab the viewer is in (Appendix 2). The final main tab is titled “Browse”, which is where the viewer can freely browse through categories or live channels in a more expanded interface (Appendix 2). When it comes to watching a streamer, the broadcast is centered in the middle of the screen, with the options of normal view, theatre mode, and full 6
screen mode (Appendix 2). There is also a live chat to the right of the stream where viewers can interact with other viewers and the streamer (Appendix 2).
1.4 Research Problem and Gaps The live streaming platform (LSP) industry is in its infancy, and so the existing body of knowledge is rather scarce. Past papers and studies have attempted to evaluate the relevance of the industry whether it is by observing competition develop (Recktenwald and Yiwei, 2016) or through the relationship between broadcasted events, such as tournaments and game releases, and viewership and interest spikes (Kaytoue et al., 2012). Twitch.tv has also been studied through a use gratification lens (Gros et al., 2017; Dux, 2018) to explain viewer behavior in small, medium, and large sized streams. Online communities have been observed for well over a decade (Soukup, 2006; Duchenaut et al., 2007; Halvorson, 2010), which has led to sound arguments to explain the shared qualities between them and third places, resulting in literature that expands on the idea of virtual third places and the positive effects often attributed to traditional ones (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982).
Based on the proven relevance and expected growth of the live streaming industry, we attempt to bridge the theoretical gap between the focal point of a stream, in other words the streamer, and the community that surrounds them. We expect to achieve this by introducing traditional business concepts such as branding (Kotler, 1991; Keller, 1993; Schwarzkopf, 2008), specifically personal branding (Vitberg, 2010; O’Brien, 2011; Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015), to explain how they influence customer loyalty (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973; Fournier and Yao, 1997; ), satisfaction ( Oliver et al., 1981, 1997; Fornell et al., 1983, 1994), and delight (Barnes et al., 2016), within the context of virtual third places (Soukup, 2006; Duchenaut et al., 2007; Halvorson, 2010). The central role of personal branding when it comes to differentiation and applying branding tools to one’s own persona (Peters, 1997) in a platform with thousands of streamers, combined with the communicative and highly interactive nature of live streaming can help build genuine ties between the streamer’s brand and the customer (Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004, p. 300) and lead to loyalty through both meeting and exceeding the viewers expectations, which refers to customer satisfaction (Oliver et al., 1997) and delight (Barnes et al., 2016). In doing so we will provide an analysis that evaluates the intricate interactions between the main actors in the industry in an attempt to further the knowledge on how virtual third places are perceived by both viewers and streamers and where the value lies for either party. We will also address the current gap in literature regarding streamers as media personalities and the qualities that make a successful streaming career.
The concept of branding has been around for hundreds of years but branding as we know it, corporate branding, emerged in the late 18th century due to the invention of packaged goods and the increased amount of mass produced products (Schwarzkopf, 2008). As branding became more and more prevalent, research conducted in consumer motivation blossomed in order to understand the factors at play and to take advantage of a new field of consumer knowledge. With the arrival of social media, the way companies administered and operated their brands changed significantly. The idea of branding shifted from a one-way flow of information to a dialogue between the brand and the consumer (Vitberg, 2010). Following this change, the concept of “Personal Branding” was thrust into the mainstream, where public figures and everyday people alike carefully select what to put out onto social media with the intent of maintaining a desired persona or image, and communicating this to other social media users, whether it be consumers, friends, family, acquaintances, or even corporations/potential employers (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015). The gap in the knowledge then lies in the 7
difference between the ‘traditional’ social media influencer personas and the persona that live stream broadcasters portray in an attempt to build a viewer base.
The existing literature on personal branding pertains mostly to personal branding in the context of a professional personal brand for oneself with the intention of selling oneself and their skills to corporations. The research paper by Philbrick & Cleveland (2015) discusses the way one should brand themselves and even lays out a 6-step process in which personal branding should be accomplished. The authors summarize their research by concluding the effects of personal branding. They posit that a strong personal brand should help communicate the things that make an individual special and valuable to a firm and will help them stand out against the competition. Vitberg (2010) also discusses personal branding in the professional context where he outlines three distinct steps for developing a successful personal brand; “(1) develop individualized and customized personal branding plans, (2) commit, measure, and adjust, (3) transferring goodwill” (Vitberg, 2010, p. 42). Vitberg’s (2010) conclusion is similar that of Philbrick & Clevenland (2015) where a properly managed personal brand will help communicate the person’s skills, characteristics and values, and experience in a way that catches the eyes of potential employers.
Another paper by Labrecque et al., (2015) investigates the ways in which people manage their online personal brand with a social media specific context. The conclusions of their paper are that, firstly, personal branding is unavoidable in an online environment due to the nature of both social media and branding (in the sense that whatever information, whether it is a text post, video, or photo, is posted by a user is then viewed by other users which informs their perception about that user). The authors also state that users face a never-ending battle between putting out information to other users and limiting the divulgence of sensitive information. The concepts of insufficient branding and misdirected branding are also introduced, where one's professional and/or social status could be damaged through the information they share online. Lastly, the authors found that for most people, managing both a social brand and professional brand has become increasingly difficult without the proper tools at their disposal.
Finally, we have a study by Chih-Ping Chen (2013) that investigates personal branding in the context of YouTube content creators. This study stands out as most studies discuss personal branding in a professional setting, whereas the author of this study investigates personal branding from a ‘personal’ perspective. The findings of the study state that individuals engage in personal branding activities, both explicitly and implicitly, through the content they create and upload to YouTube. The creation of the content-creator’s personal brand evolves from “strategic self-presentation to project a desired self-impression” (Chih-Ping Chen, 2013 p. 345). From these ‘brands’ that the content creators have established, they attract consumers and thus build their community with those who consume their content, which forms a symbiotic relationship between the content creator and the audience.
Considering the prior research, one can see that personal branding has been researched primarily from a professional perspective with the intent of showcasing oneself to potential employers, and in the case of Chih-Ping Chen’s (2013) research, the personal branding that comes both explicitly and implicitly through content creation for YouTube. The gap in the realm of personal branding knowledge is then how do streamers build personal brands with the express intent of creating a loyal community with the desire to support the streamer. This is what this thesis aims to fill as Twitch.tv and live streaming has seen explosive growth, with very little knowledge surrounding the topic.
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Third places refer to a space “where people gather primarily to enjoy each other’s company” (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 269). These places are meant to provide stimuli that an individual lacks in their first and second places, homes, and workplaces respectively. It is a sociological concept coined in the early 1980s by Oldenburg, and has been further developed, explained, and analyzed ever since, and it has become a cornerstone to many community- centered studies. There are several qualities attributed to a third place, namely a leveled social ground that guarantees genuine interactions between its members, non-discursive, spontaneous, and unpredictable dialogue that provides novelty and diversity, and a playful atmosphere that endorses sociability (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982). Criticism of their work does exist, as social leveling is extremely difficult to achieve, and an environment that welcomes and endorses anyone is too optimistic. The idea behind third places remains strong and is very much relevant to this day, but the elitist nature of Oldenburg’s original concept has faded significantly.
Third place literature has set the ground for more modern academics to explore online communities through its lense. Soukup (2006) aims to break down the arguments against online communities being referred to as virtual third places. The physical locality that exists in traditional third places, as well as the non-discursive nature of conversation are the two main obstacles that online communities have to overcome in order to be accepted as third places. Firstly, Soukup (2006) argues that the locality of a virtual third places lies in both the platform they are built within, as well as the general interest that ties the community together as the community can agree for them to take the symbolic role of “location”, instead of a physical location like with traditional third places (Soukup, 2006) . Secondly, he rebuttals the notion that if a third place was to have an interest as its “location”, it will inherently exclude anyone who does not partake in it. However, the same phenomenon takes place physically in traditional third places, where small town taverns often are not endorsing, and even exclude, travelers from a metropolis (Soukup, 2006). By arguing for the qualities that online communities have and drawing similarities to the earliest, most elitist form of third places, we highlight the ability of social leveling that comes with anonymity on the Internet, and the accessibility to them in today’s age, two qualities that are considered central to traditional third places. As a result, this helps us to transition from traditional to virtual third places.
Virtual third places are often born in gaming settings. Many players in online games come together within its virtual world and create virtual third places. Previous studies have connected these virtual third places to Oldenburg’s work by addressing the similarities between the two (Duchenaut et al., 2007; Halvorson, 2010). The main difference that is brought by viewing virtual third places in an online video game context is the extensive virtual world these games provide, as well as the characters or avatars controlled by the players (Duchenaut et al., 2007). Players in the video game are meant to cooperate with each other in order to tackle content together and progress in the game. While these objective-focused interactions differ from the staple non discursive language of a tradition third place, the focus is rather on the sociable platform as a whole, and the sociable interactions that take place as players seek a break from the “grind” of progressing in the game, making this virtual world one big hang-out spot (Duchenaut et al., 2007).
Through these papers that bridge the gap between traditional third places and those in a virtual context, it is evident that similarities between the two do exist. Our goal is to further the knowledge and develop the acceptance of virtual third places in a world that continues to digitize itself. There has not been significant development in the realm of virtual third places in the most recent years, yet technology has continued to advance, providing platforms that 9
offer sociability options closer to traditional third places than those argued for in the aforementioned papers. We believe that live streams are one of these platforms, offering a level of collective interaction nearing that of traditional third places. These virtual third places moderated by a streamer therefore provide vital context to the satisfying the needs of the viewers as we mentioned before, leading to their loyalty and desire to support.
Brand loyalty is an encompassing concept, as it is often considered the product of customer satisfaction and, by extension, customer delight (Oliver et al., 1997). The complexity of this concept led to a handful of scholars attempting to coin the term during the 1960s and 70s. One definition from the time that is often referred to as “[Brand loyalty] is a biased choice behavior with respect to branded merchandise” (Tucker, 1964, p. 32). This definition helped scholars re- frame the idea of brand loyalty and bring clarity to the concept in order to explain it in a way that harbors its complexity. Jacoby and Kyner (1973) develop a model that uses six conditions that need to be present for brand loyalty to exist, defining it as “[...] the biased (1), behavioral response (2) expressed over time (3), by some decision-making unit (4), with respect to one or more alternative brands out of a set of such brands (5), and is a function of psychological processes (6).” (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973, p. 2).
A more recent approach to brand loyalty was developed by Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2004) as they introduce the consumer’s perspective to brand loyalty by highlighting different kinds of loyalty based on customer-brand relationships and attempts to explain loyalty through a customer’s commitment level to the brand. The four categories they present are no loyalty, which exhibits a customer with that does not purchase the product and has no customer-brand ties; inertia loyalty that describes a customer that purchases the product without showcasing strong customer-brand ties; covetous loyalty where a customer has developed a strong bond with a brand but does not purchase the product; and premium loyalty that takes place when a customer actively purchases the product and showcases strong emotional ties with the brand. (Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004). When it comes to buying into a streamer’s personal brand, covetous loyalty and premium loyalty represent the two kinds of viewers that have strong emotional ties to the stream, where the first one does not directly support the streamer while the second one does.
Observations and analyses on customer satisfaction date all the way back to the 1950s and 60s, but it was not until 1981 where it was defined as “the outcome of a consumer’s subjective comparison of expected and received product attribute levels”(Oliver, 1981, cited in Fornell and Robinson, 1983, p. 403), that it received overwhelming acceptance from most scholars at the time. In a further study Fornell et al. (1994) explain that both customer attraction and retention can be explained through customer satisfaction due to factors such as media coverage and word of mouth regarding a given company will be positive in nature. The construct of customer delight stems from customer satisfaction and was first presented later that decade by Oliver et al. (1997) as they explain that meeting the customer’s expectations, referring to customer satisfaction, is not necessarily what leads to customer retention, but rather the positive emotional response that comes from exceeding the customer’s expectations is what leads to customers developing strong brand loyalty. Thus, customer delight is defined as a “profoundly positive state generally resulting from having one’s expectations exceeded to a surprising degree” (Oliver et al., 1997, p. 329, Cited in Barnes et al., 2016, p. 277). Since then the deviation from customer satisfaction to customer delight has been developed by scholars leading to Barnes et al. (2016) providing empirical evidence of the positive relationship between “joy” and “surprise”, the concepts used to describe the customer’s positive affect, and customer delight. 10
These constructs are what we believe to be the outcomes of effective personal branding by the streamer combined with the met sociability needs through the virtual third place that the channel provides. These outcomes develop from the medium that is the virtual third place for strong emotional ties to grow between the streamer’s personal brand and the viewer. We will attempt to explore these differences in loyalty and how the attributes of, and commitment to, the third place can affect the viewer’s desire to support the streamer.
1.5 Research Question
How does personal branding influence brand loyalty, customer satisfaction and delight within the context of a virtual third place?
1.6 Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop a deeper understanding of the role that personal branding plays in relation to brand loyalty in the context of a virtual third place. We aimed to explore the outcomes of customer satisfaction and customer delight as the viewer’s emotional ties to the streamer’s brand, and their sense of belonging to the virtual third place assist in meeting and exceeding their expectations, and how these ultimately impact their desire to support the streamer. Moreover, this study aimed to highlight the importance of virtual communities as third places, the social benefits for its members, and its commercial opportunities in a live streaming context. In order to investigate this topic, the authors created a qualitative study in which a semi-structured interview was administered to live-stream broadcasters in order to discuss personal branding as well as factors related to life as a streamer, in order to better understand the industry, and factors presumed to be tied to success in these platforms. Another set of semi-structured interviews were conducted with live-stream viewers with the goal of identifying the valuable elements of a broadcast that attract, retain, and excite them, and further developing these attributes in connection to third place literature. From the results of the interviews, a thematic analysis was conducted with the intent to develop deeper understanding between broadcasters and viewers by contrasting their interests and expectations with the broadcaster’s personal branding and community building efforts.
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2. Theoretical Framework This chapter is an overview of previous literature that we will utilize in order to establish a framework according to which the research will be structured and subsequently guide the creation of the semi-structured interviews.
2.1 Brands and Branding A brand is defined as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them which is intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors” (Kotler, 1981). A brand can be made up of many different things like the brand’s identity, the corporate logo, the design of the product, the packaging, and the marketing strategies created for the specific company or product (Ghodeswar, 2008).
The first examples of branding can be found as far back as 3,300 BCE in the Harappan civilization in the form of cylinder seals. These seals were used to denote ownership, type of good, and quality (Starcevic, 2015). Maker’s marks were also common on pottery and other such consumer goods in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome (Starcevic, 2015). During the European middle ages, the use of markings on products increased with the rise of popularity of merchant’s guilds (McQuarrie and Phillips, 2016). It was not until the invention of packaged goods in the 19th century that branding became what we know it as today. Branding became vital for success in this period as the production of goods moved from localized to specialized manufacturing plants. Thus, when companies would ship their goods from the factory, they would brand their trademark on the goods to differentiate their products from its competitors and the local product offerings (Schwarzkopf, 2008).
Branding continued to evolve further in the early 20th century, as companies came to realise the ways in which consumers were being affected by the branding efforts, as local goods were having troubles competing with products with branding and non-generic packaging (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). From this, motivational research and consumer research rose to the mainstream as companies rushed to take advantage of these tactics (Schwarzkopf, 2008). Companies began using slogans, jingles, mascots, and anthropomorphic characteristics for their products because of the research conducted in this period.
With the intensifying importance of branding in today's world, the effects of branding efforts and brands has become a very researched topic. It is the general consensus that branding in its many forms allows consumers to store information about the product or service, a type of memory heuristic where characteristics and product specifications are attached to the specific logo or design of the product or service. A strong brand allows companies to create a sort of ‘identity’ for the product or service, which is then judged by customers. If customers believe that a brand possesses similar identity traits (attributes, benefits, values, personality) as themselves, they are more likely to purchase it (Kotler, 2009). With a strong brand, comes strong brand awareness. The stronger a brand is, the easier it is for customers to recall and recognize logos, brands, jingles, commercials, and other such branding efforts, which then has a positive effect on customers when it comes to purchasing goods in that product category (Keller, 1993).
The concept of brands and branding have been in use in the business world for goods and services for decades (Schwarzkopf, 2008), but with the advent of Web 2.0, the way brands are managed and created has changed substantially. Social media has made it possible for 12
companies to manage their brands online and to communicate with potential and current customers. Social media has also paved the way for online influencers, providing them with a platform to grow a following, build their brand, and engage with their audience. Subsequently, the idea of “Personal Branding” has evolved from a purely professional perspective to both a professional and personal perspective where people are building and maintaining their own social media profiles just as businesses would manage their own product brands.
2.2 Personal Branding The concept of personal branding was first established by Tom Peters in 1997. In his research he states “we are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketers for the brand called You” (Peters, 1997). The idea behind this is that in a professional setting, one should be applying branding techniques to oneself as a way of communicating who you are and your potential value. Personal branding was then further defined by Philbrick and Cleveland (2015) as something that “identifies, clarifies, and communicates who you are to the world around you, whether it is a business environment, an academic field, or an entrepreneurial setting” (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015, p. 183).
As the popularity of social media increases, the idea and application of personal branding has increased with it. At first believed to be a tool solely for celebrities and public figures, it has morphed into a concept that is synonymous with social media etiquette. This is backed up by O’Brien (2011) and Vitberg (2010) as they posit that social media has created the concept of “consumer-to-consumer driven information” which is the basis of one's personal brand, and allows for the establishment of relationships with consumers and viewers alike (Fournier 1998).
Lampel and Bhalla (2007) use Goffman’s (1959) definition of self-presentation; “a way for an individual to convey information” (Goffman, 1959, Cited in Lampel and Bhalla, 2007, p. 440), to base the process in which personal branding functions. This process is then facilitated to a greater degree on social media and other online communities as communication between users is simplified due to the elimination of real world characteristics like gender, age, race, and social status which can have an effect on how people view each other (Vitberg, 2010).
Vitberg (2010) states that with the widespread use of social media, the traditional idea of “pushing” information to customers has evolved into “dialogue”. This “dialogue” is made up of an information flow both to and from the brand in question which allows users to “create personal awareness, establish credibility, and drive differentiation at the personal level” (Vitberg, 2010, p. 43). Live streaming is the perfect example of this as information-share between the broadcaster and the viewers is almost instantaneous allowing for a greater amount of interaction which then fosters relationship building to a greater degree.
2.3 Personal Branding in the Perspective of a Twitch.tv Broadcaster Personal branding has changed the way people interact with each other on social media and in online communities. Not only in how people present themselves and the information they elect to divulge but also the ways in which people judge and evaluate others online. Arruda (2003) claims that the process of personal branding follows the same logic of corporate branding where the goal is to determine and exemplify product/service characteristics and to communicate this to potential customers. As the process of personal branding reflects that of the process of corporate branding, it follows that the way customers perceive and judge personal branding would mirror the way customers perceive and judge corporate branding. 13
Personal branding for a Twitch.tv broadcaster can take form in many ways. For example, the way in which the broadcaster engages with their audience, the games they play on stream, the way they interact with those they are playing with, the type of scene and aesthetic they portray on stream, broadcaster sponsors, the way they utilize other social medias, and a multitude of other things that has the ability to affect the way in which the audience thinks about the broadcaster (Chih-Ping Chen, 2013). An important factor that must be considered by the broadcaster is that of individuality and genuinely. According to Vitberg (2010), broadcasters that have a strong sense of individuality and streamers with genuine intentions are able to differentiate themselves from other streamers that do not have these qualities, and are more likely to attract viewers to their broadcast and their community.
As Twitch.tv broadcasters are trying to “sell” the service of their live stream, personal branding should be a main concern for these broadcasters for many reasons. First of all, if a broadcaster is aiming to grow and build their community, it is important that potential viewers are able to quickly judge the characteristics and values of the broadcaster. This process of judgment allows the viewer to determine whether they would feel “at home” in the community, whether they like the broadcaster and the activities they are performing on stream and other factors they perceive to be important when evaluating a live stream. Second, by creating a brand for themself and their stream, broadcasters can leverage their viewership numbers to companies in the hopes of attracting corporate sponsors. By having a set of values associated with their brand, streamers should be able to attract corporate sponsors that share that same set of values. For example, if a streamer is considered by their community to be the best player at a specific game, computer-peripheral manufacturers (keyboards, mice, headsets etc.) might be interested in sponsoring such a streamer as the image of the streamer will transfer to the products they are using which can convince some viewers to purchase the products being used on stream.
According to Chernatony et al., (2011) most people start to develop a “consumer-personal brand relationship” with brands they interact with. From this logic we can say that Twitch viewers will form a brand relationship with a broadcaster, which creates the feeling of community in both the viewer and the broadcaster. This insight follows that of the work conducted by Gros et al., (2017) where they found that “members of a community share an abandonment and pursue similar objectives like the need for affiliation, integration of new members, sharing of emotions and socialization” (Gros et al., 2017, p. 46). This does not just apply for consumers to broadcasters, as one of the main reason’s broadcasters’ stream on Twitch.tv is to interact with the members of the community they have built (Hamilton, Garretson and Kerne, 2014). This shows the importance of personal branding as the broadcaster attracts people to their community through the way they present themselves online and are thus responsible for those who join their community. If a broadcaster is a kind and genuine person on stream, they will most likely attract other kind and genuine people to their stream and community. If a broadcaster does not like the type of people within their own community, they may have a personal brand miscommunication where they are portraying the wrong values, or simply because the way they act on stream attracts undesirable people.
2.4 Third places The concept of third place was popularized by sociologist Oldenburg mainly by his famous book “Celebrating the Third Place” (1989) and to a lesser degree “The Great Good Place” (1999) a decade later. His first definition of what a “third place” is however, dates back to 1982 in an article he wrote in collaboration with Brissett titled “The Third Place”. Inspired by the 14
general feeling of discomfort and unease that shrouded the social commentary about American people at the time, Oldenburg embarks on a search of where this malaise stems from and the importance of social relationships outside of an individual’s workplace and home in combating said social illness. The term he came up with to describe these communities that offer opportunities for social interactions is “third place”, in reference to an individual’s “first place” being their home, and “second place” being their workplace. Third places have nonetheless existed far before the term was coined, as taking part in social settings has often been central to humans even though its value has often been belittled or taken for granted (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 267).
A third place is further defined by being a place where “people gather primarily to enjoy each other’s company”, and therefore many public spaces in today’s society do not necessarily become third places, as social interactions outside of work and home tend to revolve around achieving formal goals (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 269). This means that a third place is not something that sparks the interest of outsiders nor the people who take part in it, be it a park, a local coffee shop, or a pub; it is simply a place that was appropriated by a community’s members and integrated to a their everyday life and is there to provide opportunities for social interactions that would otherwise not be possible (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982).
Sociability is one of the core characteristics of third places. Oldenburg and Brissett refer to it as the “delight” of the association in question, the added worth it has to its members beyond the purpose it is there to fulfil (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 271). In the case of a local coffee shop that fulfils the role of a third place for a community, its value for them lies far beyond their ability to purchase and consume a warm drink or food. The authors refer to a study by Simmel (1949), where he explains the term as “the sheer pleasure of the company of others” (Simmel, 1949, Cited in Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 270), to express the idea of “pure” sociability, which is a form of sociability that detaches the individuals from their outward status as they enter the third places, and thus results in a state of complete individuality and equality and unqualified acceptance (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 271). This state enables an atmosphere where everyone is encouraged to speak, no one remains silent, yet no one dominates the conversation which is how a “perfect” third place strives to be.
Language is another central characteristic of third places. Oldenburg and Brissett built on research by Klapp (1969), the concepts of discursive and non-discursive symbolism. The first refers to the kind of talk an individual engages in when pursuing a specific end, where conversations are pragmatic and instrumental in order for people to connect with others in search for goals like personal problem solving, giving directions, establishing contacts, and so on. This is not enough for a third place, where discourse steers aways from self-interest and into a sense of continuity that involves local heroes and tragedies, gossip and romance, things that are irrational and not rooted in exploitative and promotive talk. Conversation develops through the sheer want of the community to uphold unity and pursue a place to belong to (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982). This is the definition of non-discursive symbolism and what Oldenburg and Brissett presume to be the form of conversation that must reign in third places.
Oldenburg and Brissett (1982) attribute diversity and novelty as some of the main positive takeaways of partaking in a third place. As society progresses, the average individual enjoys more freedom and relaxation from responsibilities and constraints resulting in more time and money for them to pursue their interests. Interests spark delight, yet boredom seems to have filled most of this newly available resource. The reason behind this seems to tie to individuals seeking to allocate this new time in familial relationships and while these do meet important 15
needs, they are ironically similar to the individual’s workplace as “they both offer a small and highly predictable world” (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 274). Third places offer an inherently changing environment, as the composition of the community can differ at any given time, and the course of the social interactions are unpredictable and abstain from social status. This provides the individual with something novel and exciting which connects back to the search of delight to replace the boredom embedded in their newfound availability. The point of a third place is to provide “an experience of mutual concern and appreciation for people who are ostensibly different from oneself” (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 276) as well as “spontaneous and free-wheeling social experiences” (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 277).
Another daily life pressure-point that relates to diversity and novelty that third places aim to loosen is the firm and often narrow range of emotional expression allowed in an individual’s workplace and, to a lesser degree, their home (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982). A third place on the other hand thrives on emotional expressiveness mainly due to the intricate and ever- changing composition of its members. The participants in a third place are very often different, which allows emotions to take over entire aspects of the conversation from subject and tone, to word choice and intensity.
A final primary benefit that Olden and Brissett address before concluding their article, is a third place’s contribution to an individual’s mental balance (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982). Because of the constant diversity in backgrounds and experiences of the participants at any given time, everyone will often face perspectives that differ from the ones ingrained in them. The detachment of social status and equality while being individually different that characterize the composition of third places plays a key role in endorsing and attempting to understand opinions that differ from one another. These clashing opinions do not result in heated conflict, and while it might not always result in mutual understanding either, but because emotions and confusion are communicated in a “responsive arena” a different outlook on life, to some degree, does result from third places (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982).
2.5 Virtual third places Over the last few decades, the world has experienced mass digitalization in a wide range of everyday aspects from businesses and services to entertainment. Communication is on the forefront of digitalization as it strives to become better, faster, and more seamless as time goes on. Famous platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok provide services that aim to connect and entertain individuals in the digital space.
Due to the growing interest and transition into the digital space, it is not surprising that virtual communities that endorse certain subcultures or provide individuals with places to practice sociability are being built within a vast selection of platforms. These spaces are what we hereon will refer to as virtual communities, which can aspire to become virtual third places if they meet the conditions expected from a traditional third place. While the concept of a “third place” was coined in the early 80s, the core characteristics identified back then do sometimes translate to online spaces in current time. Soukup (2006) synthesized the essential characteristics of third places in order to study whether virtual communities exhibit these same qualities. He identified that third places are first and foremost accessible, they offer a neutral ground and behave as a leveler, and conversation is the main activity. The mood within third places is playful and is, to a degree, a home away from home and therefore have “regulars” (Soukup, 2006, p. 423).
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It can be argued that virtual communities possess these qualities as a stable connection to cyberspace is often the only requirement to access these communities, the internet thrives when it comes to anonymity which guarantees a neutral and levelled ground, and even though it depends on the virtual community in question, playful and non-discursive conversations with individuals that found a “home” on the platform are certainly central. These links between third places and virtual communities are rather optimistic however, as Soukup (2006) admits to identifying a few dissimilarities between them. Oldenburg’s (1999) stance on technology and digitalization is rather strict, as he believes that the only social consequence of technological advancement, he can envision is that humans will grow further apart from each other (Oldenburg, 1999).
In this vein Soukup argues that traditional third places emphasize localized community, they succeed at social levelling, and are accessible (Soukup, 2006). The accessibility concern can mainly be justified by the datedness of Soukup’s work. Technology and connectedness through digital means has greatly developed in the 14 years since his work was published. Social digital platforms can be accessed remotely through different devices, and latency has dropped massively when it comes to social interactions, which both contribute positively to accessibility.
Social levelling is not necessarily as straight forward virtually as it is physically. While traditional third places draw people together through geographic proximity, online communities remove geographic restrictions and instead draw people together through common interests (Bruckman and Resnick, 1995). If a community is drawn together through a shared interest, there is bound to be a difference in status between a newcomer or a beginner, and a regular or an expert. It is also not completely realistic to expect a traditional third place to successfully delete all signs of social status an individual has as they enter. The anonymous and non-hierarchical nature of the internet functions as a filter that is able to, in most cases, remove any trace of social status the individual has in real life, and allows for a levelled ground in everything except the interest that brought them there in the first place.
From another perspective, a third place cannot exist independently as it relies on its locality in terms of neighbourhood and local life. One can argue that a virtual third place’s “locality” is not physically bounded, but rather bounded on the interests of its members. Soukup (2006) agrees with this stretch of “virtual localization” as he states that while a traditional third places require a physical location within a neighbourhood, participants of a virtual third place can mutually agree to a symbolic construct that takes the role of “location” (Soukup, 2006, p. 433). To exemplify this, a group of online members can come together in a chat room or forum and centre their interactions around a topic such as basketball. Participants will then exchange opinions, photos, and converse about basketball. This space will inherently exclude people who are not interested in the topic, but that can also take place in traditional third places where a small town tavern also excludes a traveller from a metropolis (Soukup, 2006).
2.6 Virtual third places in a gaming setting Simmel (1949) is often credited for being the first scholar to describe the term sociability, which Oldenburg (1982) used this definition as a cornerstone to define third places. The transition of traditional third places into a virtual setting was properly established and argued for by Soukup (2006).
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Duchenaut et al. (2007) expanded on virtual third places by introducing them to a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) context. They define MMOs as “extensive and persistent online 3D environments that are populated by hundreds if thousands of players at any given moment” (Duchenaut et al., 2007, p. 129). MMOs offer a cooperative experience in real time, something single player games fail to do. Unlike the virtual spaces evaluated previously by Soukup (2006) such as chat rooms and multi-user dimension, the MMOs evaluated by Duchenaut et al. (2007) add a completely new dimension though virtual reality and a world designed to be explored collectively. This new medium is vital to “create and maintain a sense of community among their players” (Duchenaut et al., 2007, p. 131). Most virtual worlds feature cities that behave like hubs for players to gather in with large public spaces like markets, and buildings with distinct functions like banks and taverns. Due to the necessity to collaborate with others to tackle content and progress in the game, sociability is an inherent aspect of this gaming genre. Players make friends, build ties, and create parties together, which often leads to idling about and playfully talking to other players just to pass the time - a central characteristic of third places. Duchenaut et al. (2007) concludes by highlighting the importance of a game designer’s ability to produce proper “social architecture” to go with the public places they implement into the game. At the end of the day a virtual world in a video game is still very much within a video game, which means that playing the game is often tied to the player seeking character progression and therefore sociability can be hindered if managed incorrectly. While Duchenaut et al. (2007) use Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) as the central game evaluated in their paper, which is past its prime today, the arguments as to effectively make a virtual space socially rewarding are sound. Creating a space that is welcoming, that deviates from the “grind” of progressing in the game, but simultaneously offers a clear in-game function that endorses sociability is what they concluded is a good starting point for socially rewarding online video games.
Halvorson (2010) analysed virtual worlds, namely Second Life (SL), to search for key success factors to virtual third places with a commercial context. Second Life is not as much a game as it is a commercial community, it offers the users a virtual world in which they can pursue a variety of activities with a very social focus. Player interaction is the essence of SL and user created and mediated content is most of what it has to offer. During its infancy many corporations such as Coca-Cola, BMW, and Adidas, showed interest in expanding into the virtual space offered by SL, but shut down their activities due to their operations not delivering on expectations (Halvorson, 2010, p. 4). Halvorson measures “stickiness”, a term coined by Bush (1999) to describe the ability of a website to attract and retain users. The most successful user created spaces in SL revolve around music, and when interviewing the founder of “Rock Club”, the most frequented space in SL, he described that once he reached a high number of users, keeping the crowd happy and quickly integrating and welcoming newcomers is key in retaining them (Halvorson, 2010). This is also representative of traditional third places we previously discussed, where they are a home to “regulars” but also attempt to level the ground for any newcomer to feel comfortable and welcomed. In conclusion when it comes to virtual third places entertainment is vital. Providing “interesting audio and visual activities provide a fertile base to grow an informal third place” (Halvorson, 2010, p. 18) fosters stickiness, and stickiness is a core attribute to grow and maintain a virtual third place.
2.7 Twitch.tv as a Virtual Third Place Twitch.tv is a live streaming platform (LSP) that offers users the ability to both broadcast most aspects of their life, as well as to view other broadcasters and the content they decide to stream live. We focus on the gaming streams as they are the vast majority of what the platform offers, 18
even though simple chatting and real-life activity broadcasts also exist. While Twitch.tv streamers are shrouded and surrounded by branding concepts, their viewer-base and followers find the virtual community they have built to be a third place. When a streamer goes live, their followers are notified and many of them tune in to the broadcast as, for them, it is a social platform that provides entertainment and sociability. To evaluate and argue for Twitch.tv channels as virtual third places, we will highlight the core qualities of a third place, a virtual third place, and the concepts attributed to them within the gaming context.
Assisted by the evaluation of virtual third places conducted by Soukup (2006) we built a connection that explains the similarities of traditional third places and virtual communities resulting in virtual third places. These virtual third places share the characteristics of accessibility, neutral and levelled ground, playful conversations, and locality with the traditional third places presented by Oldenburg (1982). From the viewer's perspective, Twitch.tv channels and its broadcasters offer a virtual third place of sorts, as the service platform is free, highly, and easily accessible through any device with internet connection.
Communication takes place through a two-way system, where the streamer often uses their voice to talk and interact with their viewers, and the viewers communicate with each other and the streamer through a chat box. While conversation from the streamer’s part occasionally becomes commercial due to advertisements, sponsors, or their personal brand, from the viewer’s side it remains highly non discursive throughout as they react and discuss events organically surrounding the broadcast’s direct content or the community they belong to. Non discursive symbolism is described as central to traditional third places, and while it was hard to argue for certain virtual communities that revolve solely on a specific topic, Twitch.tv channels are virtual environments where conversation is irrational and spontaneous because the events that take place during broadcasts are rather unpredictable.
The individual viewer remains rather anonymous in Twitch.tv. While they need a registered account and a unique username by which they can be identified, they are extremely detached from real life attributes related to social status. Because of this, each individual viewer is, in most cases, no more than a viewer and can therefore interact with any other viewer from a perfectly levelled ground. This is also one of the main qualities that Oldenburg (1982) credits to third places. As discussed before, not all traditional third places can perfectly remove all signs of status and neither can all virtual communities, but the simplistic approach and reduced individuality that Twitch.tv offers from a viewer’s standpoint comes very close to doing so.
While Oldenburg (1982) argues for the locality of a third place being grounded physically in a town or neighbourhood, we argued, through Soukup’s research, that “locality” can be virtually grounded in an interest rather than physically when it comes to virtual third places as long as its members agree to it. This “virtual locality” is present in Twitch.tv channels as viewers gather around to watch a streamer they enjoy as they become the central interest that brings the community together. Due to the nature of an individual being the central interest of a community, the specific aspect of the streamer that each viewer is drawn to may vary. The video game they are currently playing, the humour or persona the streamer has, even the language the streamer speaks can all be a specific viewer’s reason to tune in. Due to this diversity many different people from different backgrounds and interests might find themselves interacting with each other during any given broadcast and said mix can often be different.
When it comes to the gaming context of third places we explored, Duchenaut et al. (2007) described the importance of a welcoming space that detaches the users from the “grind” of the 19
game while encouraging sociability as it represents the pivoting point of a third place. Twitch.tv is a platform that focuses on live gaming broadcasts, which has expanded the horizons of video games as third places. Streaming a video game is not delimited to online multiplayer games like in Duchenaut et al. 's (2007) study because the user, in this case the viewer, does not need to be a player in the game. This detachment from the game itself by becoming a viewer of someone else’s playthrough can be seen as taking a break from the “grind” that Duchenaut et al. (2007) describe players sometimes seek. Streamers offer a sociable “meeting point” for people who enjoy a specific game, are interested in it, and/or are taking a break from it, to meet and interact with a community that finds itself in the same position. The concept of “stickiness” was brought up by Halvorson (2010) to explain the ability to attract and retain users in a digital setting. A part of the broadcaster’s job is to make their stream attractive for regulars and endorsing and welcoming for newcomers to grow and maintain a healthy viewer base. Therefore the attractiveness of a stream is a defining factor on whether or not a successful virtual third place is sustained, which to a degree differs from the description Oldenburg (1982) gives of third places: “[...] not a place outsiders find necessarily interesting or notable” and “Not even to its inhabitants is the third place a particularly intriguing or exciting locale” (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 270). This is explained by the physical boundedness traditional third places require, but when it comes to virtual third places attractiveness is necessary to complement the central interest of the community to grab people’s attention and draw them in.
2.8 Outcomes of Personal Branding and Virtual Third places We intend to bring together personal branding and virtual third places in the context of live streaming through the concepts of brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and customer delight. We believe these will aid us as they describe the outcomes that come to be through the streamer’s combined efforts to clearly communicate their positioning and brand to the audience through the third place that they have created and continue to manage. These efforts that we believe result in loyalty, satisfaction, and delight then lead to the streamer’s sustainability through the viewers’ desire to support them, allowing us to explain the applications and commercial aspects of live streaming.
2.8.1 Brand Loyalty Loyalty when it comes to customers was highlighted in the 1960s and early 70s by a handful of scholars who took turns at coining the term. One of the most notorious ones is W. T. Tucker (1964) due to bringing simplicity to the various definitions and studies that were being conducted on the topic at the time. He defines brand loyalty as nothing more than “a biased choice behaviour with respect to branded merchandise” (Tucker, 1964, p. 32). He explains that brand loyalty is an extremely complex concept as an individual’s loyalty to a brand can be rooted in one of the many elements that it represents or that its products offer, be it design qualities, aesthetics, content, values it represents, physical qualities of the product, and therefore it is difficult to realistically attribute purchase behaviour to brand loyalty unless extensive research is conducted (Tucker, 1964, p. 33). Nearly a decade later research was conducted in an attempt to separate brand loyalty from repeat purchasing behaviour (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973). Their definition of the concept is much more complex as it encompasses the six necessary conditions for brand loyalty they identified: “[...] the biased (1), behavioural response (2) expressed over time (3), by some decision-making unit (4), with respect to one or more alternative brands out of a set of such brands (5), and is a function of psychological processes (6).” (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973, p. 2). These six elements of brand loyalty attempt to 20
explain it more precisely than Tucker (1964) while addressing the criticism he gave by clarifying and defining the areas that bring volatility to brand loyalty and make it difficult to use practically. These were some of the early steps towards defining customer loyalty within the idea that not all repurchase behaviour can be attributed to loyalty, and that not all repurchase behaviour guarantees future purchases.
While this definition of brand loyalty was, and continues to be, fairly accepted amongst scholars, concerns developed to include not just what brand loyalty is and how it can be measured, but how it can be managed and used effectively. In today’s present business culture the sentiment that “a brand is more than a brand” is frequently shared and widely accepted, which Fournier and Yao (1997) recognized over two decades ago and attempted to refresh the concept of brand loyalty by aligning it with consumer-brand relationships. They thoroughly criticize the rigidness existing in the current body of knowledge, emphasizing that previous studies have given loyalty an “either or” quality where an individual is either loyal or disloyal, and that fidelity and exclusivity are somehow tied to loyalty when in reality consumer behaviour is much more complex and traits of loyalty that can be developed upon through customer relations have been ignored (Fournier and Yao, 1997, p. 454). By interviewing several coffee-drinkers that exhibit powerful connections to a specific brand of coffee, Fournier and Yao reveal and discuss the importance of brand-self connections and how their relations to the consumer’s life themes can lead to deep and significant levels of loyalty (Fournier and Yao, 1997, p. 461). Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2004) build on these advancements to theorize four different types of loyalty based on consumer-brand relations and the idea that loyalty is not a “black or white” concept: no loyalty, covetous loyalty, inertia loyalty, and premium loyalty. While the first one is self-explanatory, covetous loyalty refers to a consumer that does not purchase the product, but in fact does have strong emotional ties to a brand created by the social environment that surrounds it. Inertia loyalty refers to a customer’s systematic preference of one brand over others but does not rely on emotional ties but rather habit or convenience. Premium loyalty is a combination of both, where emotional ties are strongly built through consumer-brand relationships and the purchase level of the customer is high (Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004, p. 300-301).
Twitch.tv harbors a wide range of “brands” within itself, as each streamer tries to stand out from the rest through a variety of means, be it their humour, the game genres they play, their set of skills inside or outside of the game they play, the language they speak, and by doing so develop a very specific identity and personal brand. Virtual third places are then built around these personalities as viewers are drawn to some, or all, of the qualities the stream provides. We want to emphasize the importance of these streams as virtual third places for viewers to gather around. This sense of community provides a strong and very distinct social environment to a brand, which can develop emotional ties between the individual viewer and the entire ecosystem the broadcaster has built, a clear example of premium loyalty that we recently presented. On the other hand, it cannot be ignored that several viewers can also be drawn to a channel simply because of convenience, whether it is because they are the most viewed streamer that is currently playing a game that interests the viewer or because their favourite streamer is not online. This kind of behaviour does not exhibit strong ties to the brand in specific, but nonetheless consumes the content that it provides, exemplifying the inertia loyalty described by Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2004). Streamers are also extremely susceptible to the consequences of their actions, which can have a quick and direct impact on how their brand is perceived. The notion that “a brand is more than a brand” is especially true to them because they are their own brand, and so they need to manage their consumer-brand relationships effectively in order to attract, retain, and maintain their viewer base. In our research we aim to 21
gather information from viewers specifically about streamer brand perception and brand loyalty in order to determine what influences their willingness to become part of a virtual third place in the given context, as well as to determine if loyalty contributes to the viewer’s willingness to support the streamer.
2.8.2 Customer Satisfaction and Delight The concept of consumer satisfaction dates to the 50s and 60s, where research on the topic was generally conducted in the context of psychology. Oliver (1981) explains the term in a retail setting as “the outcome of a consumer’s subjective comparison of expected and received product attribute levels” (Oliver, 1981, p. 28). Consumer satisfaction has been proven to have a positive effect in loyalty (Newman and Werbel, 1973; LaBarbera and Mazursky, 1983; Singh and Sirdeshmukh, 2000), which in turn affects an organization’s ability to retain customers - as a satisfied customer is more likely to purchase a product or consume a service, and the longer they are likely to keep doing so instead of seeking for an alternative. Attracting new customers is also easier for firms that foster high levels of customer satisfaction because the social environment surrounding the firm, as media coverage and word of mouth will have a positive connotation (Anderson, Fornell, Lehmann, 1994).
Anderson (1973) explored the effects of customer dissatisfaction and concluded that failing to meet the customer’s expectations causes customer dissatisfaction and leads to a decrease in engagement and consumption. The extent of this rejection however, varies depending on the complexity of the product in question as simple and easy to understand products had higher rejection levels than the more ambiguous ones as it adds a layer of uncertainty that shrouds judgement (Anderson, 1973).
Recent scholars have broadened the concept of customer satisfaction, claiming that it might not necessarily lead to customer retention. A new construct, customer delight, is gaining traction as it attempts to better describe the factors that lead to customer retention and loyalty. Grounded on Oliver et al. 's (1997) delight model, where they explore the positive emotional response that lies within satisfaction. Consumer delight is defined as a “profoundly positive state generally resulting from having one’s expectations exceeded to a surprising degree” (Oliver et al., 1997, p. 239) The present the importance of “surprise” in a sequence where it leads to arousal, which leads to pleasure, which leads to delight. This suggests that delight and satisfaction are separate concepts that show correlation (Oliver et al., 1997), where delight requires to exceed, rather than meet, the customer’s expectations. A recent study by Barnes et al. (2016) explores the consumer’s positive affect more in depth by measuring the efforts of an organization to create customer joy and surprise, and their effects on customer delight. They provide empirical evidence that joy and surprise in fact have a strong positive relationship to customer delight (Barnes et al., 2016). Their study brings forward interesting points about where delight stems from and what active efforts an organization should focus on in order to spark joy and surprise in their customers, namely the employee’s attention, friendliness, and care towards the customer, the employee’s expertise and skills, and tangible variables like the environment and atmosphere perceived by the customer, the employee’s appearance, etc (Barnes et al., 2016, p. 280).
Customer satisfaction, and by extension customer delight, are very important constructs in the live streaming context. We discussed the importance of personal branding for a streamer to differentiate from competition, and how these differentiation factors can attract viewers to the broadcast. While a streamer can continue to provide the same content they are known for in 22
order to keep their community satisfied, Barnes et al. (2016) provide a different perspective that explains why streamers might struggle to maintain their viewership numbers high even if, in theory, they are doing enough to satisfy them. Third places are characterized by their playful atmosphere and spontaneous and unpredictable dialogue, which are somewhat synonymous to the concepts of joy and surprise present in Barnes et al.’s (2016) work. By pursuing efforts that target the viewer’s positive affect, a streamer can attempt to exceed their expectations and spark delight in order to develop stronger emotional ties and, by definition, increase customer loyalty. Graph 1 (Appendix 1: Graph 1) exemplifies this phenomenon by comparing the overall viewership numbers of Michael “Imaqtpie” Santana and Mohammad “Yassuo” Abdalrhman over the last 12 months (February 2019 to February 2020). 12 months ago, both streamers fluctuated at a similar view count of roughly 6-8 thousand at any given time. Imaqtpie has dropped to an average 4 000 viewers while Yassuo has steadily surpassed the 10 000 mark (TwitchTracker.com b, 2020). Imaqtpie has stayed complacent and avoided any kind of innovation and spontaneity during his broadcasts, while Yassuo has implemented many community activities and events such as “1 vs 1” games against viewers, free subscription challenges, and several 24hr+ streams for causes ranging from charity, illness awareness, and simple and joyous fun. We believe that keeping one’s community engaged and entertained is vital for healthy growth and customer retention, as well as being a facilitator for loyalty that can inspire the viewer to support the streamer financially through donations and a subscription.
2.9 Conceptual Model Based on the theories discussed above we have created a conceptual model that encompasses our theoretical framework. Our conceptual model, Figure 1, showcases the main actors, being streamers and viewers, that will be central to our data collection and the theories that affect each of them respectively. These theories showcase the key areas for each actor that will be addressed in this study.
Figure 1: Conceptual Model
Our conceptual model encompasses one concept that does not have its own section in the theoretical framework: Online Communities. The reason why we chose to explicitly mention it in our model is because virtual third place researchers, namely Soukup (2006) and Duchenaut et al. (2007), refer to online communities in the context of virtual social spaces that possess the potential of becoming a virtual third place. We believe that the same can apply to streamer channels on Twitch.tv on a case to case basis, where some adhere to the criteria required for third places while others do not.
Our model describes the connection between the theories we have chosen in respect to the actors in the system, where a streamer’s personal brand enables them to pursue the creation of a virtual third place through the online community they build around their persona. The viewers seek for social interaction and community engagement, and given the right conditions in terms of their needs being met or exceeded, through customer satisfaction or delight respectively, 23
strong emotional ties can be born between what the streamer represents and the individual viewer, leading to the existence of brand loyalty.
Personal branding is central for a streamer in order to create a “product” out of themselves. As explained by the previous research we introduced previously, incorporating elements of branding and marketing into yourself as an individual in order to showcase what you have to offer as a person has been highly looked at in a corporate, academic, and entrepreneurial setting (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015). With the surge of social media influencing as a modern career choice, the importance of personal branding is highlighted and is, in our opinion, of vital concern for the success of an influencer. As we believe streamers to be a hyper-communicative form of social media influencer, personal branding is a key area that we will centre our study around.
Twitch.tv was chosen as the setting for our study due to it being the leading live streaming platform in the western world. The platform itself harbours a wide variety of streamers, and with them their respective online communities. Our theoretical framework presents Oldenburg’s concept of third places and transitions it, through existing research, to the virtual context in which Twitch.tv operates. We believe it to be important to clarify the similarities between traditional third places and the online communities that exist in Twitch.tv in order to argue for their position as potential virtual third places. Therefore, we explain how the positive social effects that third places have in both an individual and at a community-wide level can be attributed to a streamer’s community.
Finally, the concepts of customer satisfaction and delight helps us address the viewer as a consumer. As their expectations are met or even exceeded, the variety of existing research often ties them to increased loyalty to the brand and re-purchasing behaviour. We address brand loyalty in order to describe a state in the viewer that highlights their emotional ties with and investment to the streamer and their community, which we believe are critical factors of their brand, and ultimately leads them to their willingness to support the streamer. 24
3. Scientific Methodology In this chapter we will discuss and argue for the philosophical stance we will be taking in respect to ontology, epistemology, and other various aspects of our thesis such as design and research approach.
3.1 Ontology Ontology aims to define the nature of reality, centred around the debate of whether reality is objective, impartial, and independent of the actors within it, or whether social entities are subjective to the observer and moulded by their actions and interactions (Bryman and Bell, 2011, p. 20; Saunders et al. 2012, p. 130). The two schools of thought within social sciences are objectivism and subjectivism. An objectivist researcher believes that either social reality is objective and external thus there is only one reality that everyone partakes in regardless of the social actors that interact within it (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 47). A subjectivist researcher on the other hand believes that the social reality is constructed by the social actors and is dependent on each individual’s sense of reality and therefore there are as many realities as there are points of view (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 47).
In order to determine the ontological stand for our research, we need to answer whether or not the social phenomenon we are trying to explore and explain is the same for everyone who observes it. We will be conducting a qualitative study where we aim to interview actors central to the phenomenon in order to gather an array of opinions and perspectives from which we will attempt to develop a better understanding of it. Since we as researchers adhere to a subjectivist philosophy, it is important that our research follows a subjectivist standpoint. In order to synthesize knowledge from our interactions with the social actors involved in this phenomenon we acknowledge that both them and us will have different perspectives on the reality we discern, and our social reality in the context of what is being studied will likely be re-shaped through our interactions. We also believe that the constraints imposed by an objectivist point of view of reality would hinder our ability to draw relevant findings, as its focus on validation through empirical means could mislead us into ignoring elements of our data that could otherwise be interpreted. While live streams as third places are very much a reality, from our experience it is evident that it is perceived very differently between individuals regarding the values and attributes people associate to it. The same could be said about the personalities they revolve around and the perceived value that independently lies within any given viewer and varies from them to the next.
3.2 Epistemology Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge, namely where it comes from and what can be considered valid knowledge and concerns the researcher and the object that is being researched (Collis and Hussey, 2014). An issue that is contested is whether social reality can be studied through the same methods used to study natural sciences (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 44).
Positivism dates to the way research was conducted in the context of natural sciences, with the scientific method at its core. It emphasizes observation and experimentation in order to discover theories in an objective reality that is independent of the researcher and their place in it (Collis and Hussey, 2014). Positivism tries to provide empirical evidence to every reasonable and justifiable claim that is made through logical or mathematical proof (Walliman, 2011). While the nature of positivism is scientific, it can very much be applied in the context of social 25
sciences. Research in any given area of business can still be successfully conducted through a reliance on theories and data to explain and predict a social phenomenon (Collis and Hussey, 2014). This focus on measurable evidence keeps the researcher in an objective and independent stance (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 47), distancing themselves from what is being observed and rejecting the notion that they have an effect on the social phenomena they study. While we have created a foundation of concepts and theories that we hope to examine our findings with, the goal of our thesis and our research design does not align with the positivist philosophical stance, mainly because we aim to better understand the social phenomenon in question through other means than analytical tools and we will not attempt to draw empirically supported conclusions nor generalize our findings.
Interpretivism developed from the belief that positivism has inherent flaws in the way it defines the nature of reality and knowledge regarding social sciences. One of the main criticisms social science researchers have towards positivism is the inability to separate people from the social context they are embedded in, thus questioning the independence of reality in relation to the actors within it given that applying methods used to examine natural sciences leads to a reduction on the complexity inherent to the social world (Saunders et al., 2012, p. 137). Another criticism lies in the researcher's inability to be fully objective due to human nature and therefore becoming part of what they observe (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 46). Interpretivism instead focuses on the subjective nature of reality, one shaped through the individual’s personal lens that is their perception (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 47). Built on the assertion that a researcher’s interactions with what is being researched due to the social reality they both belong in, interpretivism emphasizes the effect that investigating a social phenomenon has on it (Smith 1983; Creswell, 2014). Instead of relying on the scientific method, interpretivists attempt to “describe, translate and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the frequency of certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social world” (Van Maanen, 1983). A researcher following this paradigm will not search for objective findings through statistical analyses of data, but rather will aim to derive knowledge from their interpretation of a phenomenon (Collis and Hussey, 2014). Therefore, an interpretivist approach to epistemology supports the idea the researcher is vital to the outcome of the research they are conducting and thus cannot be fully objective and removed as they interact with the phenomenon under study. The nature of knowledge in a social context is therefore subjective to the participants that are being studied. This position fits our mode of thinking and thus the research we aim to conduct, as it accepts that both the researchers and the subjects of the study are subjective to their own pre-understandings, knowledge, and opinions (Saunders et al., 2012, p. 137). This subjectivity when it comes to key success factors and major attractive attributes of live streaming is central to what we want to gain deeper understanding of in our qualitative study, and the ability to draw knowledge in such a social setting is enabled by interpretivist philosophy, which is why we have chosen it.
3.3 Research Approach The collected data in a study can be connected to literature in a variety of ways, yet two reasoning methods are central to the discussion: deduction and induction (Patel and Davidson, 2011, p. 23). The main difference between the two lies in where theories come into play in respect to the data that has been collected. In a deductive approach, the researcher reaches conclusions by referring back to the theories, concepts, and models they have discussed and established prior to observing the data (Patel & Davidson, 2011, p. 23).This kind of reasoning relies on building logical connections between the existing body of knowledge by using the collected data to explain and prove whether these connections are empirically supported (Patel 26
& Davidson, 2011, p. 11). Deduction is characterized by its sturdiness, logical sequence, and hypothesis testing, and aims at explaining a phenomenon in a way where findings can be generalized and a clear conclusion can be reached (Patel & Davidson, 2011, p. 23) and thus deductive reasoning is most often central to quantitative studies. While our study is qualitative in nature, we believe that a deductive approach is most suited as it aligns with the goals we are aiming for. The theoretical framework we have developed, namely personal branding concepts in regards to streamers, brand loyalty, and customer satisfaction and delight when it comes to viewers, will shape the direction of the semi-structured interviews we will be conducting with both groups of actors and thereafter build a discussion where we analyse the collected data in light of the conceptual model we have developed. Our findings will still not be able to be generalized empirically, however given the underexplored nature of live streaming from an academic perspective our study will explore existing knowledge and attempt to link it to the field, leading to the possibility of some level of generalization within this context and setting (Gummesson, 2000, p. 89). Therefore, we deem the deductive approach to be the most suitable.
The inductive approach on the other hand, shifts its attention to a discovery process where the researcher will attempt to develop theory from the data they have gathered, instead of setting the groundwork for data collection in theory beforehand (Patel & Davidson, 2011, p.23). Since this research method aims to develop theory from observations rather than the alternative, where expected conclusions are formulated beforehand, it cannot lead to generalized findings as the interpretation of the data is too subjective and tightly linked to the specific circumstances of the phenomenon being observed. Therefore, induction is often present in qualitative studies where the researchers aim to more deeply understand an event through observation and only then attempt to explain it. Even though our study is qualitative, we will not be choosing this research approach as it does not cater towards the question we set to answer. A certain aspect of induction might be present however, as we might discover that certain concepts we deemed relevant could be proven not to be so, and further theorization as to why can be discussed thereon based on our data, but we still aim to use the collected data to discuss, evaluate, and modify our conceptual framework making our research deductive in nature.
3.4 Research Design Business research often falls in one of two types of research design: qualitative and quantitative (Collis and Hussey, 2014). The chosen research design has implications in terms of ontology and epistemology, as the nature of reality and knowledge are central in choosing what kind of data collection and analysis methods are chosen (Collis and Hussey, 2014). A quantitative study highlights the importance of developing a framework of existing knowledge and testing it through logic and mathematics in order to come to an empirical conclusion on the behaviour of an observed phenomenon (Collis and Hussey, 2014). Data collection relies heavily on surveys as quantitative research relies on standardized data from which usable statistics can be derived. Due to this, quantitative studies often follow a positivist paradigm in both ontology and epistemology, and it explores the social world through natural science methods (Saunders et al., 2012). We have not chosen a quantitative research design as we have selected an interpretivist paradigm in terms of ontology and epistemology, and our study relies on the notion of perceived reality over absolute reality, and the implications tied to the complexity of studying social phenomena and the inability to fully explain them exclusively through natural science tools.
Qualitative research is often tied to interpretivist ontological and epistemological views, and it emphasizes the quality and depth of the data collected in order to develop a rich understanding 27
of the social phenomenon (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 52). Qualitative research does not attempt to draw empirical evidence to support and generalize a claim, but rather aims to compensate for reliability and generalizability through other means. Because interpretivists believe that the researcher’s actions affect the research, it is very difficult to support the idea of replicability (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 53), so the focus instead is in whether observations and interpretations follow established procedures to be explained or understood. In terms of generalizability, it can be argued that while positivists can draw a conclusion through data collected from a sample of the population they attempt to observe, interpretivists can associate their findings in one setting to other similar settings and reach some degree of generalizability that way (Gummesson, 2000, p. 89). We chose a qualitative research design because our aim is to better understand the intricacies of being a streamer, building a community centred around your persona, and the personal association that viewers have to it which transforms it into a virtual third place. These social interactions and varied perceptions of reality are interpretivist in nature, and these are very difficult to explore through quantitative means. Statistical inference would not show the whole picture of what we are trying to observe, and we need to be able to subjectively interpret our data in order to meet our goals.
3.5 Pre-understandings Given the interpretivist nature of us as researchers and subsequently our study we believe it important to address our pre-understandings as researchers due to the effects they will have in the way we perceive the world (Gilje & Grimen, 2007). The reason why we chose to study the live streaming industry is associated with our personal interest in the field as we both actively engage in this form of entertainment, while the industry’s impressive growth captivated us due to our background as international business students. With a focus on the streamer’s personal branding and projecting the value of the online community they create into the context of a business; we further tie our academic background to the live streaming industry as the subject of our study.
Another important take on pre-understandings is the knowledge the researcher has obtained through experiencing the object that is being studied, which often lead to assumptions, insights, and opinions that shape their perception (Hartman, 2004). Our interactions with the people we interviewed were also bound to be shaped by our background (Gilje & Grimen, 2007), which is why we have opted for a semi-structured interview format. This allows us to distance ourselves and our beliefs from those of the interviewee to reduce the risk of leading them into saying the things we want to hear. At the same time, it also gives us, the researchers, the ability to drift and redirect the conversation towards the general topics we aim to gather data from.
Our goal is to collect data and discuss our findings in respect to the conceptual model we have developed. This model takes into consideration our assumptions, insights, and opinions on live streaming and describes it, and its effects, through qualities and attributes that we believe to be central in explaining this phenomenon. We refer to this throughout the earlier chapters of our thesis, where we introduce our own assumptions to explain certain elements in the industry that lack concrete evidence due to the under-explored nature of the industry. While we believe that our preconceptions play an important role in our study, we will keep an open-minded position when it comes to building a discussion, as our aim is to develop an understanding of live streaming. We admit that our model is rather subjective and so we hope to re-shape our framework through the data we collected for it to better represent reality.
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3.6 Literature search To get started with researching this topic, we began by scouring Google Scholar for research papers based on live streaming in general. This was done so that we could understand what research exists already, and what gaps in the knowledge exist. From here, we began to brainstorm the types of business administration concepts and theories that could play a part in the success of a streamers career. Because livestreaming is an internet-based phenomenon, we wanted to include theories related to marketing since one’s success on Twitch is inherently linked to how well a streamer can market their stream as well as themselves as a personality or persona. From our own experiences on Twitch, we also understand that socializing and community plays a very large role in whether or not a person will watch and continue to watch a stream on Twitch, and we therefore searched for theory that helps us describe this. Lastly, we wanted to include a theory that discusses consumer satisfaction or something similar so as to be able to link and explain certain behaviours regarding why a viewer might watch a stream or even donate and/or subscribe to a particular streamer. In order to find these papers, we tried to use many different keywords so as to cover as much ground as we could. As such, we used keywords like branding, personal branding, online branding, live streaming, motivations, web 2.0, online communities, brand loyalty, consumer behaviour, participatory communities, and others.
To ensure the reliability of the information we sourced, we made sure to not use any bachelor’s or master’s theses and constrained ourselves to peer-reviewed papers and other such scientific articles. This is because we believe that with peer-reviewed papers there is some guarantee that the information in these papers are factual and can be used as the base for our thesis. This ‘constraint’ was made easier by the Umeå Library’s database function which allowed us to use articles from a variety of trustworthy journals like DiVa Portal, Springer Link, Wiley Online Library, and others. By using papers from these journals and databases, we ensure, to the best of our ability, that the information gained from the articles are as accurate as possible. To help increase the accuracy of information we include in our thesis, we made an explicit attempt to read many papers that investigate similar concepts so as to build up a base of knowledge for ourselves which we can then use in order to judge the validity and applicability of the information. By being critical and looking at as many resources as we could, we believe that we have been able to reduce any preconceptions we as researchers may have held about certain ideas, concepts, and/or theories.
Another consideration that we made was the way we cited papers. If we found something in an article attributed to a different researcher, we tried to find where it appears originally and read the quote with the context around it. This ensures that the quotes and references we take from other papers are not distorted to fit another author’s research.
3.7 Choice of Theories Personal Branding We believe that for a Twitch.tv streamer, their personal brand is vital as it encompasses almost everything that defines a streamer. For example, the streamer’s brand first and foremost is their personality which then becomes their ‘streamer persona’. In addition to this, everything that the streamer includes in the stream like whatever background they are sitting in front of, the equipment they are using, things that can be seen in the frame of their webcam, how they interact with those they are playing with/against, and how they interact with the viewers and chatters etc (Chih-Ping Chen, 2013; Vitberg 2010).
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As the stream is the service that the streamer provides, the streamer is responsible for marketing it to potential viewers, ensuring that they can attract new viewers, followers, and subscribers (Chih-Ping Chen, 2013). The streamer must also work to attract corporate sponsors through sponsorship fit, leveraging their brand for other financial opportunities (Peters, 1997). As the streamer’s brand is built up over time, they are then able to attract not only financial backing but also an audience that is like them in the respects of values and characteristics. This is vital to streamers as without an audience, they will not be able to serve advertisements, attract corporate sponsors, or even get subscriptions from viewers.
Personal branding was selected, as opposed to a theory like corporate branding as personal branding not only discusses the marketing of personal values and characteristics that some could find interesting, but also because personal branding is recent enough to have been created with social media, and Web 2.0 in general, in mind. By including this theory in our thesis, as well as heavily influencing our interview questions, we will be able to gather information on the effect one’s brand has on attracting an audience, from both the streamer’s perspective and the viewer’s perspective.
Virtual Third Places We started exploring Oldenburg’s third places (1982) as we are interested in the positive effects that being part of a sociable community can have on an individual. While in our study we observing communities in an online setting, we successfully found previous studies that attempt to introduce the attributes of Oldenburg’s traditional third places into a virtual context, leading us to sound explanation on how online communities can transition into virtual third places if they behave similarly, and provide the qualities that traditional third places have (Soukup, 2006; Duchenaut et al., 2007; Halvorson, 2010). The combination of these findings allows us to explain how a streamer’s community can become a third place if it offers a neutral, levelled, and playful environment that endorses interactions that differ from those in first and second places, so long as it aligns with the values and interests of its audience.
One main criticism we had to circumvent is that third places need to be physically bounded as they cannot exist independently since it relies on its locality in terms of neighbourhood and local life. Locality in a virtual setting could be replaced by a central interest that draws the community together (Soukup, 2006, p. 433). In this case, a streamer’s persona and personal brand is this central interest and therefore everyone in the community shares some sense of “locality” and togetherness because they are all there for the sake of interaction and entertainment while having a specific interest drawing them together.
Brand Loyalty Brand loyalty describes the emotional connections built between customers and brands (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973; Fournier and Yao, 1997; Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004), which adds a viewer-centred perspective to the streamer’s personal branding. There are many “brands” within Twitch.tv that compete for the viewers’ attention, and so the importance of pursuing brand loyalty is emphasized. This ties to virtual third places because the environment that is provided in each and every stream is different due to the streamer’s persona, making the virtual third place the “product” that they provide and what they represent as a brand is what speaks to the viewer. We believe brand loyalty to be important to our study because it helps us explain the viewer’s actions towards wanting to participate and support the stream, as well as their willingness to engage in them as a virtual third place.
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Customer Satisfaction and Delight Customer satisfaction and delight are similar concepts, where satisfaction is believed to be important because it is often associated with customer retention and attraction (Oliver, 1981). Customer delight is a newer concept, and it refers to the part of customer satisfaction that ensures customer retention and attraction. This is important to discuss in the context of our study because we believe that customer delight leads to brand loyalty, which is what streamers should aim to achieve. Customer delight is that extra effort that is put into keeping the stream engaging and is often achieved through surprises and exceeding expectations (Oliver et al., 1997; Barnes et al., 2016). We want to study if the efforts of a streamer to innovate and keep their audience entertained reflect the prosperity of their channel and the community they build.
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4. Practical Method In this chapter we will discuss the practical design choices that we have made to properly investigate the phenomenon we are attempting to explain. First, we will delve into our literature search and detail the ways we went about finding relevant papers and the criterion we used to evaluate them. Following that, we will explain why we have chosen the theories present in our thesis. Lastly, we will discuss the design choices surrounding our interview process.
4.1 Data Collection When collecting data under an interpretivist approach it is important to select a method that enables the researcher to develop information about the phenomenon in question while still retaining the integrity of the data (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 130). There are several ways in which qualitative data can be collected. One qualitative data collection method that was considered is known as the critical incident technique, where the researcher addresses relevant issues directly and is often used to collect data about a particular event or experience based on the participant’s recollection of key facts surrounding them (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 139). The objective of the critical incident technique is to discourage the interviewees from talking about hypothetical situations and other people’s experiences and to instead fully focus on the scenario presented to them (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 140). We believe that the purpose of our study is to better understand the dynamics that surround personal branding in virtual third places, and so the constraints presented by the critical incident technique were deemed too restrictive to the data we wanted to collect, which is why we decided against using this method.
Focus groups are another way of collecting qualitative data (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 142). The main objective of focus groups is to gather data about the collective experience or opinion of a group of people experiencing the same situation or a common phenomenon (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 141). While participating in streams is a group activity that you collectively experience with the other viewers and the streamer, it is the outcomes of loyalty, satisfaction, and delight, at an individual level that we are interested in gaining a deeper understanding about, and conducting a focus group could alter the individuality of each participant’s answers and instead provide a collective and homogenous answer. Therefore, we decided not to use this data collection method.
Interviews allow the researcher to find out information about what the participants do, feel, or think through questions, gaining an understanding through their opinions, attitudes, memories of their actions, etc. Interviews can be unstructured or semi-structured. In semi-structured interviews, the researcher prepares a selection of questions in order to focus the data towards the main topics of interest, and develops further questions depending on the interviewee’s answers (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 134). In unstructured interviews the questions are not prepared in advance and are instead developed throughout the interview. This approach is often used to explore the participant’s feelings and experiences (Collis and Hussey, 2014, p. 133). We ultimately decided to choose semi-structured interviews as our data collection method.
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The main reason we have decided to use semi-structured interviews is due to the fact that this method allows us to probe answers from the interviewees, as well as allowing them to explain in detail their answers to our questions (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 323). It is easier for interviewees to answer exactly how they would like in an interview as they do not have to type out long answers as they would have to in a survey, for example. Because we operate under an interpretivist epistemology, the semi-structured interview is a perfect tool for this type of research as our aim is to understand the perceptions that the participants have on the phenomena we are investigating (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 323). We are also hoping that by choosing a semi-structured interview method our interviewees might lead the discussion to areas we might not have thought about previously, which might add important information and help us to answer our research question (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 324). As interviewers, we will be aiming to phrase our questions in a way that allows the interviewees to answer how they see fit, and without restricting their answers.
A semi-structured interview method is also advantageous to us as researchers as people are generally more willing to be interviewed than to complete a questionnaire or survey, and even more so when the topic at hand is something that is relevant to them and their interests (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 324). By interviewing people directly, instead of sending out questionnaires, we as interviewers have the ability to ensure that the interviewee is at ease during the interview, help and clarify questions in the event of a misunderstanding, and assure the interviewees that their responses will be handled with utmost respect and according to the ethical guidelines we have laid out for ourselves using the work by Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009).
According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009), if the questions we wish to ask are “complex and/or open ended, and the order and logic of questioning may need to be varied” then it is without a doubt that a semi-structured interview is the best tool to use (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 325).
Although the advantages of the semi-structured interview method are perfectly suited for what we want to achieve with this research, there are also some disadvantages we must consider when administering the interview. The most important consideration to be made is how we aim to conceal the interviewer bias that is inherently present during semi-structured interviews. Interviewer bias can take the form of the type of tone we use, any non-verbal behaviour that the interviewee can pick up on, the way we impose our own beliefs that come through in the form of the way we ask a specific question, as well as any explicit or implicit reactions to the answers given by the interviewee (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 326). In order to lessen the effects of interviewer bias, we will be aiming to ask questions that are not leading questions and try to remain unbiased regarding what we ask and how we ask the interviewee.
Another bias that we must account for is that of the interviewee/response bias. The interviewee/response bias arises due to the fact that interviews are an intrusive process (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 327), and can thus lead to interviewees willing to participate in the interview but may be reluctant to answer certain questions. This can be the case due to sensitive questions or the unstructured nature of the interview.
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Lastly, we as researchers must understand that because we are making a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews, the results will not be able to be generalised over the larger population, which must be discussed in the analysis and discussion chapters of this paper (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009 p. 327).
4.2 Sampling Regarding sampling in a qualitative research context, there exist three main types of sampling methods: snowball. purposive, and quota sampling (Northeastern University, 2020). Snowball sampling is where we ask for referrals from the already interviewed participants to partake in our study (Northeastern University, 2020). This method of sampling was rejected as we intended to establish a criterion for interviewees and felt it would be difficult to control for this if we used snowball sampling.
The decision therefore was between purposive and quota sampling. Purposive sampling is selecting interviewees according to a preselected criteria relevant to what we aimed to study with this thesis, whereas quota sampling is selecting a set number of interviewees based on preselected criteria with a much greater focus on gathering a set number of participants (Northeastern University, 2020). As we did not want to limit or constrain ourselves in regarding how many interviewees we selected, we decided to select purposive sampling.
In order to start sending out invitations to our interview, we first had to create a criterion for the Twitch streamers. This was done as a way of controlling the type of streamers being interviewed. For example, we did not want to select streamers that had no viewers as the presence of a community around the streamer is one of the main focuses of this paper. In addition, we did not want to select streamers from the same genre as we believe it would lead to homogenous answers and thus fail to give us the full picture of the phenomena being studied. As such, we came up with a set of criteria to help us select which streamers to send an interview invitation to, these criteria are as follows; 20+ viewers average per stream, viewers chatting in Twitch chat, somewhat even distribution between male and female streamers, and an aim of selecting streamers from a wide range of video game genres.
When searching for Twitch streamers to contact, we ran into a multitude of issues that we had not foreseen. For example, it was very difficult to find out how to contact the streamers directly. This happened for many reasons, first off almost every Twitch streamer turns off the ‘direct message’ function built into Twitch as a way of avoiding spam from their community. Sending the invitation through the Twitch chat while the streamer is streaming was also not an option as it would be considered spam and would typically be deleted from chat by the Streamer’s moderators. Many Twitch streamers have links to their other social media platforms like Twitter, Discord, Instagram, or even their business emails. These methods of contact were pursued but did not result in many actionable responses. The main issue was the fact that Twitter has very strict rules on who you can send direct messages to if they are not following you to begin with. Twitter also gives users the ability to disallow all direct messages from users which many Twitch streamers opted to use. This made contacting potential interviewees very difficult and vastly decreased the number of potential streamers we could contact. Contacting streamers through their Discord servers proved to be the most useful as it allowed us to get in contact straight with the streamer solely because Discord is used as a place to facilitate intra- community engagement. Of course, many streamers ignored the interview invitations sent by us but we still managed to get a few interviewees through this method.
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Another issue we ran into regarding interviewee selection was due to COVID-19. As many people are in quarantine and lockdown all around the world, many streamers consider this time to be the best time to stream and build their brand as the amount of viewers on Twitch at any given time has increased massively (Appendix 3: Graph 2; TwitchTracker, 2020). This means that many streamers are unwilling to give up their time to us when they could be streaming and earning money / building their brand or their community. In the end, we sent out almost 200 interview invitations and only managed to interview 6 different streamers.
It was also challenging to get the viewer interviews conducted as well. The 8 streamers we interviewed allowed us to send interview invitations through their Twitch chat as a quick and easy way of reaching viewers, but simply put, almost no one was interested in helping us with our research. Sending out the interview invitations to random streamer’s Twitch chat was also not an option as every streamer is against self-promotion in their own Twitch chat, and any such action from us would be looked down upon and subsequently removed by the streamer’s moderator. It is for this reason that we could not interview as many viewers as we had initially planned. As such, we had to rely on personally messaging users who partake in streamer Discord channels or interview people known personally by the researchers.
Referred to Occupation Streamer Gender Age Interview as: Status Duration Streamer 1 Not stated Full time Male Not stated / young 23 minutes streamer adult Streamer 2 Employed Part time Male Not stated / young 27 minutes streamer adult Streamer 3 Not stated Full time Female Not stated / young 22 minutes streamer adult Streamer 4 Not stated Full time Female Not stated / young 24 minutes streamer adult Streamer 5 Not stated Full time Male Not stated / adult 22 minutes streamer Streamer 6 Not stated Full time Male Not stated / adult 20 minutes streamer Viewer 1 Part time Viewer Male 23 years old 15 minutes student / part time working Viewer 2 Student Viewer Male 22 years old 19 minutes Viewer 3 Student Viewer Male 23 years old 21 minutes Viewer 4 Student Viewer Male 22 years old 17 minutes Viewer 5 Not stated Viewer Male 24 years old 18 minutes
Above is a short table on the six streamers and five viewers that we interviewed. Contains simple demographic information on themselves but will be discussed more in detail in chapter 5.1.
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4.3 Transcribing To transcribe all the interviews that we conducted; all interviews were recorded. As researchers we ensured that every interviewee was made aware of our intention to record and for what reason as well as informing the interviewees that their identity would remain anonymous which helps the interviewees feel comfortable when answering questions. The interviews we conducted took place over a voice call which meant that facial cues and other body language were not available to us. This made it more important to transcribe exactly what was said by the interviewees. For example, if an interviewee emphasised a certain word, misspoke, or changed what they were saying mid-sentence, we made sure to transcribe it as it was spoken. In addition to this, things like the tone of their voice and pauses in sentences add another dimension to the answer that is given (Bailey, 2008). This allows us to make comments on these verbal cues and interpret to a greater degree the answers of the interviewees.
4.4 Thematic Analysis For us to analyse the interview responses we collect, we will be using the thematic analysis method of analysing qualitative data, which in this case will be the responses of the interviewees of our semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis is where we as researchers will transcribe the interviews we will administer, followed by an examination of what was said in order to find common themes, topics, and ideas that are present in the answers of the interviewees (Caulfield, 2019). According to Braun and Clarke (2006), there are six main steps of the thematic analysis method. They include familiarization, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining, and naming themes, and producing the report (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
Familiarization includes the transcription of data followed by re-reading the data and noting down initial ideas and themes that seem important (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Generating initial codes is where the researcher must code the interesting ideas and thoughts, followed by the collection of appropriate data for each code (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Searching for themes is the important step of collecting the codes and categorizing them into themes for all the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Reviewing themes is essential as this is where the researcher must ensure that the themes are consistent with the codes and the entire data set (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Defining and naming themes is the ongoing refinement of the themes and creating definitions and names for each theme (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Lastly, we must produce the report. This is where we as researchers must analyse each theme with compelling examples for each theme, relating back to our selected literature (Braun and Clarke, 2006). This method was selected as it is the most applicable research method for qualitative studies and works perfectly in conjunction with the semi structured interviews that we are conducting to achieve our purpose and answer our research question.
4.5 Ethical considerations Bryman & Bell (2007) discuss many different ethical considerations that can be made regarding both qualitative and quantitative research. Thus, we have selected the most relevant factors that we believe can be impacted by us as researchers.
Informed Consent is where the researchers must inform the research participants of what the research is and what the researchers intend to do with the information (Bryman & Bell, 2007). Since the interviews were conducted through an online call, it was paramount that before we 36
started recording any interviews that the participant was informed of our intentions, as well as giving us their consent to record and be a part of the research.
Anonymity where the identity of all participants be protected and not mentioned throughout the research (Bryman & Bell, 2007). To ensure this was handled properly, when the interviews were conducted, they were not asked for their names to ensure with certainty that their names could not be present anywhere, even in the recordings and transcriptions.
Affiliation where all affiliations, be it professional or personal that can potentially affect the research be disclosed within the study (Bryman & Bell, 2007). As researchers, we have no affiliations with any organisations which has been stated in chapter 1. Regarding the interview participants, our affiliation to USBE was mentioned.
Honesty and transparency are the need to be completely open regarding information related to the research as well as communicating this information to the interview participants (Bryman & Bell, 2007). We did this by fully explaining what the intent of the research was, and what we planned on doing with the answers provided to us by the interview participants.
By following these ethical considerations, we believe we made an excellent effort to maintain the integrity of the study and protect all interview participants from any harm or wrongdoing. 37
5. Empirical Findings In this chapter we will first introduce the interviewees in two different sections, one regarding streamers and another one corresponding to the viewers. We will present the empirical data, which was used for conducting the thematic network analysis.
5.1 Profiles of Interviewees Streamers We interviewed 6 different streamers who provided answers regarding their perception of personal branding in live streaming, their opinion on meeting customer needs, viewer loyalty, among other things.
Streamer 1 is a young adult male originally from the United States. His initial approach to streaming differs from the other interviewees, as his focus was on his gaming career over his streaming one. He first started streaming 3 years ago. He has been pursuing streaming fully for the last year however and describes his community as the ultimate motivator to this decision. He highlights the importance of personality and provides insight on how streamers are discovered in a platform like Twitch.
Streamer 2 is a young adult male with mixed heritage currently living in Sweden. He was drawn into streaming to make some extra money while making his own gaming experience more entertaining. Because he is not pursuing streaming as a full-time job, the content of his answers revolve around the importance of community not just as a means to grow your stream, but as an entertaining, sociable, and playful space for people to unwind and interact around a topic of their interest.
Streamer 3 is a young adult female that did not want to disclose any more personal information. Similarly, to Streamer 1, she has been streaming for roughly 4 years, but has only been doing so consistently as of last year. Her focus has always been in seeking interaction for herself while playing the game, which led to the community she has today and so her answers focus largely on that. She draws attention to being a female streamer as an inherent unique selling point (USP), and the benefits and disadvantages that stem from it.
Streamer 4 is a young adult female. Her streaming career started in 2015 and became her full- time job by 2017. Since she is currently trying to step away from the game that once made her popular and into variety streaming, she provides a special point of view to personal branding in terms of the challenges of rebranding and maintaining a loyal community. As a female streamer she touches on similar topics to streamer 3 regarding toxicity tolerance and keeping a friendly and welcoming channel.
Streamer 5 is a male adult from the United States. He has been involved in the “pro” gaming scene for nearly a decade and describes this scene as any aspect related to a video game that allows you to earn a living wage. His passion for playing video games is what led him to seek opportunities to earn money while doing so, which led to him becoming a full-time streamer around 3 years ago. He focuses greatly on the qualities needed to be a successful streamer, especially on differentiation and niche streaming markets.
Streamer 6 is a male adult from Canada. He has been a streamer for close to 5 years and been pursuing it full-time for the last 2. He mainly contributes through his input on personality, 38
especially about its centrality to his brand, and how doubling down on his personality as a unique selling point is a key success factor. He focuses on how portraying a strong opinionated character is important to effectively deliver the role of a streamer as an entertainer.
Viewers We interviewed 5 viewers to collect data on how streamer brands are perceived, what are important streamer brand attributes for a viewer, what leads to loyalty and the support, as well as whether innovation and engagement is important.
Viewer 1 is a 23-year-old male from Finland. He is partly employed while being a part-time student. He provides insight on passive participation, and how a stream often provides a sense of company while doing other activities. His main interest lies in competitive esports, and thus often watches professional esport players’ streams, which highlights Twitch’s lack of discovery tools as a streaming platform. He brings attention to the importance of sense of humor as well as the idea of viewers attracting viewers, where he is often drawn to watch popular streams that are at the top of the page.
Viewer 2 is a 22-year-old male of mixed heritage living in Germany, currently working his way through university. Just as Viewer 1, his main interests lie in the competitive side of esports and all things related. He provides insights about personal branding and corporate sponsorships that streamers strive for and their potential effects on the viewers. In addition, he touches upon streamer loyalty and the things that can influence this in viewers in both a positive and negative manner.
Viewer 3 is a 25-year-old male from Sweden currently enrolled in his last year of university. His Twitch consumption consists mostly of a select few streamers and esports competitions. This viewer places high importance on the existence of not just an enjoyable personality but a relaxed environment in which viewers can join and chill out in.
Viewer 4 is a 22-year-old male from Sweden, also working towards finishing university. His Twitch consumption consists mainly of esports and streamers whom he deems as having a high skill level in whatever game they are streaming. This viewer highlights the different factors that come into play to enjoy a streamer when it comes to competitive video games.
Viewer 5 is a 24-year-old male with mixed heritage that was unwilling to disclose any further information other than that he was from Europe. He watches streams rather frequently, usually as background noise but does tune in more attentively to some streams, especially when it comes to esports. He considers himself somewhat of an active member of a streamer’s third place and contributes financially to the streamer. He provides insights mainly on drivers for interaction and sociability as well as sharing his opinion about what it takes for a viewer to want to support a streamer.
5.2 Personal Branding Streamer’s Perspective When discussing the importance of personal branding, what a streamer’s brand represents, and its purpose, many interviewees agreed that honing and developing a specific offering on a streaming platform is vital for success in the field. As highlighted by Streamer 2 “It gives all of your viewers the incentive to watch you specifically and not anyone else” (Streamer 2), 39
meaning that a large aspect of building one's own personal brand is advantageous for retaining viewers and building a following.
When pursuing personal branding, Streamer 5 understands the idea of a personal brand somewhat differently as he states that “If there’s anything about you, literally anything, then that factor alone gives you some form of brand” (Streamer 5). This, in our opinion, shows that while having a brand is beneficial to grow a healthy stream, every single broadcaster that decides to stream on Twitch will have some sort of personal brand from the get-go. He expands on what separates everyone’s brand from successful brands: “I think you need to have something that highlights you, and you need to hone into it and make that part shine, being really great at one thing can easily carry your whole stream.”(Streamer 5). This functions as an introduction to unique selling points as a way of differentiating and specializing in each area in order to fill a niche. Being able to identify one’s unique selling points becomes essential in order to develop it, a point that Streamer 5 explains “Be super analytical in what people say cause there might be clues as to what that person thought was fun about your stream, things that you might not consider otherwise” (Streamer 5). The role of a streamer is that of an entertainer as well as a moderator of the third place they manage, which leads us to believe that being aware and understanding the elements of your stream that are attractive to your viewers is vital not only to better please the audience, but to develop a personal brand that fosters meaningful connections with and between them.
One interviewee explains the importance of personal branding and how it affects the community built around it “It’s not just about how your stream looks but also your community and how you build it with your brand. It is really important to make that clear to your audience because they too are part of it” (Streamer 3). This shows that by building a community, the community itself will evolve to become part of the stream’s brand, being able to attract, retain, or repel viewers. Streamer 1 furthers this idea “The chat of a stream reflects the streamer, in my opinion. So if the majority of the people in chat are rude or bad mannered or toxic, even if joking, it’s because the streamer is toxic or acts toxic as well.”. This element of the brand can become very central to it as the streamer’s channel grows and could affect the way in which the online community develops, hindering or enabling its ability to become a virtual third place.
One streamer sums it up perfectly, “You want people to focus on you as the streamer and not so much the game that’s taking place” (Streamer 4) where the streamer and their brand is at the forefront of the viewer’s attention and focus instead of what they might be doing on their stream.
Viewer’s Perspective When discussing whether or not a streamer’s defined brand image affects their opinion on the streamer, most viewers agreed that they see it as a necessary step for streamers looking to further their career both in terms of growth and community size but also in order to attract corporate sponsors and other sources of income. Viewer 2 states that “… branding definitely makes life better for popular streamers because it allows them to diversify stuff like selling merch or organizing events under the name of the brand … so, I definitely support that” (Viewer 2), which shows an understanding of the reasons as to why streamers make the decision to turn themselves and their stream into a brand. Some viewers even feel that corporate sponsors have a positive effect on the growth of sponsored streamers. Viewer 1 states that “… it makes me get into an organization more or discover streamers I didn’t know about and enter their community with enthusiasm because an org I like supports them” (Viewer 1). This response points to the existence of sponsorship image transfer, which has been a heavily 40
researched topic in the context of sports but not in the context of video game streaming platforms.
The viewers also pointed out possible negative effects of personal branding. For example, Viewer 5 states that “if they’re super in your face trying to promote their socials, their merch, their sponsors, it can get annoying” (Viewer 5). So, while most viewers are understanding of why streamers will have a brand and try to sell merchandise to viewers, it must be done in a way that does not alienate the viewer base and community. Different viewers will have different ideas on what constitutes too intrusive regarding pushing their brand, so it is up to the streamer to find the most effective balance. Another factor that streamers must keep in mind when accepting corporate sponsors is that of ‘sponsorship fit’, another highly researched realm of marketing in the context of sports and general events. Viewer 3 states that “if it’s a company that I really don’t like or am against that starts sponsoring a streamer [that they enjoy watching], obviously that’ll make me think less of the streamer and vice versa” (Viewer 3). This highlights that viewers judge sponsorship fit when a streamer they watch accepts a sponsor and has the ability to change the viewer’s perspective on the streamer. Therefore, it is important for the streamer to accept sponsorships from companies that align with the values of themselves and their community.
5.3 Virtual Third Places Streamer’s Perspective When asked about their opinion on fostering an online community that aligns with the core characteristics of third places all of the streamers showed very high care and appreciation to their community “I’ll always be there and perform all the same whether it’s for 10 viewers, 1000, whatever, because if I can help one person’s life then it’s for sure worth it. So yes, my community is the ultimate motivator.” (Streamer 1) and “I’m always blown away by how amazing they are and how they always come back to my channel, I feel like I don’t deserve them at times. They are at the heart of everything really, the community” (Streamer 3) are just a few examples of their candid words towards them. To us this expresses the streamer’s participation in the third place they build, making their role not simply that of a moderator, but someone that benefits from and cherishes the interactions it facilitates.
To some streamers we interviewed building a third place both for themselves and other people was their goal from the start “So someone helped me set it [the stream] up, I think it was OBS that I was using back then, and I just thought it would be fun to interact with people that are playing the game.” (Streamer 3). This makes us think that active efforts to build a third place from scratch are motivated by the streamer’s longing for a space to belong to when meaningful and real time interactions are not available for them in the virtual settings they operate in. On the other hand some of our interviewees did not actively seek to build a community “I didn’t care for the stream I wasn’t invested in it at all and I put no effort into it and just wanted to focus on my gaming.” (Streamer 1). This approach did not last long however as described by him “I didn’t realize right away, but then another person added in, and another one, and at the time I was starting to build a community, but I wasn’t conscious of that. I started liking that, it started feeling really good.” (Streamer 1), highlighting the effect that fostering a community can have on the streamer. We believe this effect comes from the genuine interest the viewer has on the streamer, and even if not an initial motivator to start streaming, being presented with a place to belong to has the ability to quickly become a motivator to continue doing so.
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We further expanded on the concept of belonging and meaningful interactions within a virtual third place by asking the streamers about their initiatives to enhance interaction and engagement. Many of them expressed ways to make communication more bilateral “Welcoming newcomers when they join the chat is a big thing, asking them questions about themselves and so on” (Streamer 3). It is the streamer’s responsibility to keep the viewers entertained, but actively engaging with them in conversation rather than giving shallow one- way responses could result in a more friendly and talkative space, which seems to be what streamers hope to achieve. Some streamers were quick to expand the limits of Twitch as a platform, creating a multi-channel network using other social media platforms such as Discord, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, for their communities. This has moved part of the community’s activities to an off-stream space “off stream I do organize a lot of events. [...] We do in-game events and stuff like that, movie nights where we watch the same movie on Discord. You know just to build that sense of community” (Streamer 2). This drive to become more than just an entertainer and an audience showcases, in our opinion, both the streamer and the community as a collective seeking for a third place to fill their need for genuine social interaction. Given the limitations of Twitch they therefore resort to other complementary platforms.
Toxicity in a third place is also a major component of managing a virtual third place, as many interviewees voiced their concerns and initiatives to combat it. “With trolls it’s pretty much just insta-ban because you really don’t need those types of people. [...] no point having a person like that bringing everyone down because it does spread” (Streamer 2), streamer 2’s zero- tolerance approach to toxicity is very apparent and it showcases his perceived importance of maintaining a friendly environment. This sentiment is shared by several of the streamers we interviewed, while two streamers, streamer 1 and streamer 5, present an alternative to this. They believe that there is inherent content that can be produced through trolls “I have a copypasta that I use to make fun of these people [trolls], so I swap in the bad troll’s username and start spamming it in chat. The rest of my viewers then start copy-pasting it and spamming it as well.” (Streamer 5), turning towards a core characteristic of his brand, copypastas, streamer 5 is able create interactive content for his community and himself while also collectively punishing the troll. Streamer 1 on the other hand, employs a banning strategy similar to the zero-tolerance policy used by other streamers but with a creative twist: “Something I did recently is give all my 2017 followers a VIP badge, and a command that is “!slap”.” (Streamer 1), which he explains as a command that allows his long-time regulars to ask for permission to “slap” someone resulting in a ban. He then playfully engages his audience while he decides of whether the instigator deserves a ban or not. We believe these two ways of dealing with toxicity highlight the vast amount of opportunities there are to innovate in a virtual third place and how interactivity can be pursued in a wide variety of ways.
Viewer’s Perspective Throughout the interviews with the Viewers, a lot of the responses were centred around the online community surrounding the Twitch streamers, although the responses were not as homogenous as the responses corresponding to personal branding. Roughly half of the viewers had positive reactions to that of the streamer’s community. Viewer 1 discussed a very popular streamer called ‘Forsen’ and his community; “the biggest strengths of his streams are the community around there and the sense of “belongingness”. It’s quite mindless entertainment, but it’s rooted in the personality … to feel like a part of it I think interacting with your chat is very much needed to uphold your community” (Viewer 1). From this response one can see how 42
the feeling of community is rooted not only in the streamer themselves but also the other viewers that take part and help form the idea of belongingness as Viewer 1 mentioned. The building of the community falls upon the streamer as they attract people that enjoy the same things, have the same values and characteristics, etc. Viewer 3 believes that the streamer's community is “cultivated by the streamer but they can be famous for having a chat that is very friendly and open. That obviously makes it more attractive to sort of interact and hang out with people other than the streamer in chat or in Discord” (Viewer 3). This perspective is held by many other viewers as well as streamers that were interviewed for this research. The responses from both Viewer 1 and Viewer 3 highlight the importance of continued interaction as a way of making viewers feel a part of a community and as such, it is the onus of the streamer to continually interact with their viewers.
On the other hand, some viewers only had negative experiences with a streamer’s community through Twitch chat which led them to actively avoid participating in streamer communities. Viewer 2 stated that in their opinion “Twitch chat to me is very toxic … definitely a turn off for me which is why I do not participate” (Viewer 2). This toxicity can be seen mostly in very large streamer communities simply because these communities are very visible viewers who browse Twitch and because it can be very hard to effectively police Twitch chat when there are twenty thousand people watching live. From our experience, it should be mentioned that the size of a community is not the only factor as some streamers either actively encourage toxicity in their chat, simply make no effort to contain it, or their own streamer personality is toxic which encourages their viewers to be toxic too.
Some viewers do not participate in Twitch chat or streamer communities for other reasons, for example Viewer 2 states that “since I do feel pretty happy with the people that I know, I don’t feel the need to interact with the community” (Viewer 2). This response is interesting as it points to the fact that those who interact often within a streamer’s community might do so due to lack of friends or lack of people in their life that share their interests and must seek companionship elsewhere, although this is purely speculation. Viewer 4 highlights another reasons as to why viewers might not interact with the streamer’s community as they state “I don’t see the point of talking to others in a streamers community simply because I don’t know them and don’t really care or value their opinions or thoughts about things” (Viewer 4). This response is a perfect way to highlight one of the largest differences between a Third Place and a Virtual Third Place, as engaging with people online can be extremely difficult to some due to the anonymity that is inherent to online communities.
Although the viewers were not in agreement regarding why they do or do not engage in streamer communities, the recurring theme in all of the viewer’s responses were that of the drawbacks of a large community. Viewer 3 discusses that they tend not to engage or interact with a community as “I feel like it gets to the point where if it’s [the community] large enough, it becomes almost impossible to have any back and forth. It only becomes an input and your input is drowned out by so many other inputs” (Viewer 3). This sentiment is echoed by Viewer 1 as they believe “there isn’t much of a point to try to get your message through if the chat is moving too quickly” (Viewer 1). Unsurprisingly when viewers want to have discussions with streamers, it seems they tend to gravitate towards very small streamers as “it’s very easy to get good feedback because they’re only getting a few messages every few minutes so they’re guaranteed to see your message” (Viewer 3).
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5.4 Interactions and Engagement Streamer’s Perspective As explained by streamer 2,“Making sure you’re actually interactive with your chat is vital, giving your people the interaction they’re looking for because that’s what Twitch is all about” (Streamer 2), facilitating community interaction and engagement is another one of the cornerstones we have identified in our interviews with streamers. Streamer 1 described his early experiences with viewers engaging with him: “People would come by after their day at work or whatever and ask hey [streamer 1] how are you, how’re the games today, and that’s what attached me to streaming - community.” (Streamer 1). Experiences like these were, to one degree or another, reciprocated by all the streamers we interviewed and seem to have had clear effects on the streamers’ approach to streaming. These kinds of eye-opening events seem to have driven them to both understand the importance of engagement as well as to want to genuinely pursue and provide interactivity to their third place.
From there our conversations led to a variety of examples and anecdotes about the importance of chat interaction, like streamer 3 explains “Having a streamer that when you come to chat they don’t just say hi back, but they ask you how are you today or something, just trying to bring up a bit of a conversation and let them know it’s okay to speak” (Streamer 3). We find her example rather interesting because it addresses newcomers and the idea of openness and inclusiveness. Facilitating conversation is very important, especially by being aware that not everyone in the third place is comfortable enough to interact from the get-go even if that’s what they truly desire and joined the stream for, so enabling viewers individually through direct interaction can be seen as an attempt to include them into the collective. After all streamers seems to also be a direct beneficiary from the third place they host and manage “I always try to interact because my community is my best friend really” (Streamer 4), which reflects the genuinely of streamers when it comes to generating interactions, as they too enjoy and are positively affected by them. However a sense of duty is still apparent as the same interviewee, streamer 4, later on talks says “I don’t want to let anyone down because I know people have confided in me that my stream is the highlight of their day or that they weren’t feeling too good but then I went live and it made them feel better” (Streamer 4). While she is not the only streamer that vocalized these thoughts, we think that she clearly describes her position in the third place as a facilitator, entertainer, and moderator.
Viewer’s Perspective Based on the interviews with the viewers, we believe that interactions and engagement between the streamer and the viewers / community is a very large part as to why viewers prefer some streamers over others. These interactions and engagements help build relationships between both the streamer and the viewer and the viewer to other viewers. For example, Viewer 5 believes that “If the chat is funny and hyper-engaged with what the streamer says or is doing, it’s really fun” (Viewer 5). This highlights the role that interaction plays in the enjoyment for some viewers. Other viewers had similar thoughts on the importance of interaction. Viewer 3 for example stated that “I kind of like to follow on the “copypasta” train as it were so if everyone starts spamming … if something funny happens everyone will type a reaction” (Viewer 3). This example of “chat spamming” is prevalent throughout Twitch which many viewers believe adds to the experience of being present within Twitch chat.
Regarding the types of interaction the streamer engages in, Viewer 1 believes there are things that the streamer can do to make the interaction a bit more genuine; “but a camera does make it feel more authentic that you are there with the person and your interactions feel more real” (Viewer 1). From our own experiences on Twitch we believe that a camera showing the 44
streamer’s face as they play is almost a necessity at this point for the exact reason given by Viewer 1, it adds a personal touch to the stream and allows the viewers to see the face of who they are watching thus giving the viewer a better image of who it is they are watching.
Interaction outside of Twitch was almost mentioned by a few viewers in the context of social media. Viewer 2 stated that “I would say social media is pretty important just for streamers letting their fans know what’s up in their lives” (Viewer 2), and Viewer 5 stated that “Instagram is convenient to sort of keep track … people tend to be more rare and thoughtful with what they post but you still get the important updates” (Viewer 5). Both responses give the impression that social media is important for a streamer to have for two separate reasons, one being it allows the fans to engage on a deeper level with the streamer and the other being that it allows them to stay up to date with things like stream schedules and special events.
Other viewers voiced their concerns and possible drawbacks about the size of certain streamer communities. Viewer 3 mentioned that “I feel like if you get large enough it becomes almost impossible and the quality of that interaction tends to weaken” (Viewer 3). This response aligns with other answers we have gathered from viewers, where they discuss how trying to interact with the large streamers is almost impossible due to the sheer number of viewers vying for attention in Twitch chat. Other viewers had other reasons not to interact with streamers or other viewers, for example Viewer 4 mentioned that “I don’t see the point of interacting with a streamer as it feels kind of fake in a way to me” (Viewer 4). For viewers that still want to interact with these big streamers, Viewer 5 made a good point on how to achieve this; “Most of these streams have discords though where you can probably find people to actually interact with in a less “noisy” environment” (Viewer 5).
5.5 Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction Streamer’s Perspective Customer delight and customer satisfaction was an area that the streamers themselves did not necessarily recognize and organically talk about. However, a lot of their discussion surrounding interaction and engagement, as well as community building and branding to a certain degree, were based on a few assumptions of meeting viewer expectations that could be attributed to customer delight and satisfaction. Streamer 2 says that “It’s about whether or not a streamer has a brand that links well with me, does this person actually interact on the levels that I desire?” (Streamer 2), clearly indicating that streamers do in fact put themselves in the viewers’ shoes to figure out how to effectively cater them better.
When presented with the idea of satisfying and delighting their viewers, the consensus among streamers was that viewers return to the stream because they enjoyed the experience last time. Streamer 1 showcased this opinion in one of his answers to the topic “They wanna see what they came for and liked last time. [...] Just the interaction with the community makes people stay.” (Streamer 1).
Innovation was exemplified quite often in our interviews, and while they often were in the context of viewer engagement, we can quite safely assume that engagement is related to satisfaction and delight, as an entertained and engaged viewer is likely having their expectations met or even surpassed and thus enjoying the content of the stream. A few examples of innovation are those that Streamer 1 and Streamer 5 use in order to address toxicity while simultaneously creating a “game” for the audience to partake in, both interacting with the viewers at a special level while maintaining fundamentals of their third place. 45
Viewer’s Perspective In the context of ensuring both customer delight and customer satisfaction, we identified two major factors which are meeting the expectations of viewers and the importance of keeping content fresh. The importance of meeting expectations is highlighted by Viewer 2’s response to the question of which streamer they are loyal to; “He [AdmiralBulldog] does have a very interesting personality if you want to put it like that but whenever I tune into his stream I can always count on the fact that it’ll be entertaining” (Viewer 2). Because Viewer 2 believes that his expectations on whether they will be entertained by watching this specific streamer, they are always willing to come back and enjoy the content. It is very important for the streamer to both manage viewer expectations and to fulfil viewer expectations. As Viewer 5 states “People will tune in to watch expecting to see something similar to what they liked last time. If you manage to make that “something similar” your personality and reactions to things instead of your content/gameplay, then you’re in a much healthier position” (Viewer 5).
When asked about what factors are important for a streamer to keep their viewers entertained, Viewer 3 states that “It’s a very tough balance, but I think you have to balance keeping things interesting, make sure that there’s something new happening and maybe have some monthly events or something similar” (Viewer 3). This response merges both the importance for a streamer to meet expectations but also keeping the content they stream fresh to not bore and alienate their viewers. Viewer 1 agrees with Viewer 3 as they believe that “streams do sometimes become a bit stale if you keep coming back and not feeling fully satisfied with spending your time there” (Viewer 1). Viewer 2 also believes that it is important to them that the streamers they watch alternate which games they stream; “I don’t like watching the same game for a year and a lot of streamers just do that” (Viewer 2).
Other factors that led to customer delight and customer satisfaction are the joy of Twitch chat and other aesthetic choices of the stream. Viewer 1 stated that “I do definitely actively read it [Twitch chat] and it is for sure a very important part of the stream for me personally” (Viewer 1). Whereas Viewer 2 also mentioned that “If everything for example has this nice layout and everything looks clean and fresh then it does seem more professional … it does have the potential to enhance the stream” (Viewer 2) which points to the aesthetic choices taken by streamers can also have an effect on delight and satisfaction provided by the stream.
5.6 Loyalty Streamer’s Perspective While not necessarily a central part in every interview we conducted, a few streamers did voice their opinions on brand loyalty and how they think viewers think when it comes to supporting a streamer. Streamer 5 puts it rather simply: “[Being] invested enough to support me” (Streamer 5) is the overarching opinion of streamers as to what it takes for viewers to support their streams.
Streamer 6 explains what he was striving to achieve when he started streaming “It has to be the personality. [...] These people [loyal viewers] would watch whatever it is I do. That is what I wanted to strive for, to have enough of those so that I could stream full time and make enough through their support to be able to do whatever we choose to do together.” (Streamer 6). He says that he wanted to build a community where people were invested enough to support him and be loyal to his brand, leading to them watching and interacting with the streamer regardless of the content that was being displayed, and the key to this he believes to be in his personality. 46
By personality we assume that he was holding his personality traits as core values to his stream, placing a lot of effort in honing it into an attractive attribute for the audience. Streamer 4 helps us solidify some of these interpretations as she says “You want people to focus on you as the streamer and not so much the game that’s taking place” (Streamer 4), expressing that she is currently aiming to achieve something similar as well.
Viewer’s Perspective Loyalty from the viewer’s perspective can be anything from always watching a specific streamer over others, donating and or subscribing to a streamer, or even through the purchase of sponsored goods. Viewer 1 had a more standard outlook on streamer loyalty; “I would be loyal in the sense that if a streamer I like is live, I would watch them over any other streamer” (Viewer 1). Another type of loyalty we have seen in the interviews is that of the loyalty to the Twitch platform. Viewer 2 stated that “I wouldn’t say I have loyalty to streamers, but you could say that I am loyal to Twitch more than anything. For me it’s a lot about the handiness of Twitch” (Viewer 2). Loyalty can also come about through streamer’s constantly meeting the expectations of their viewers, as exemplified by Viewer 4; “there is one streamer who is quite small at the moment that I’ve been watching for a while and I feel like I really like them as an entertainer so I always come back to their stream at some point” (Viewer 4).
Viewers even exercise their loyalty to their chosen streamers through financial means. For example, Viewer 1 mentioned that “If there’s a streamer I like and they are promoting a gaming chair or headset or something they use because they are sponsored, and I was looking to buy something like that, I would probably be inclined to do so as a sign of support” (Viewer 1). This response points to the fact that sponsorships can and do work in the right context and it is up to the streamer to find ways of utilizing viewer loyalty.
When asked about whether or not they have ever donated or subscribed to a streamer, Viewer 3 stated that “ tend to run AdBlock … so then knowing that I’m essentially not contributing to streamers I will tend to support them by occasionally dropping a donation or perhaps buying some merch if they’re selling it to sort of make up for that … and at the same time you know that the money is going to someone to keep making the content that you want to consume” (Viewer 3). This shows us that viewers are aware that their donations and subscriptions can help streamers and even use it as a way of ‘ensuring’ that the streamer can continue to create the content they enjoy and consume. Another reason to subscribe to a streamer, as mentioned by Viewer 5 is that “the chat experience was so fun with the sub emotes and stuff that I decided why not, I consume his content a lot and this is pretty fun so I can spare the 5€” (Viewer 5). This shows us that if done correctly, streamers can create effective incentives for viewers to subscribe and not just donate, as a subscription can afford the viewer emotes, exclusive ‘abilities’ or even access to a subscribers-only club.
5.7 Diffusion of Information Streamer’s Perspective This theme is mostly related to and answered by viewers, as it refers to streams as a tool to spread information and the interest that lies in that kind of content. Therefore, streamers were not asked questions pertaining towards this topic.
Viewer’s Perspective At the beginning of this research paper, we believed the diffusion of information through a streamer’s broadcast would be quite important for most viewers. After the interviews were 47
conducted, we could see that this is not the case for most viewers. When asked about the nature of their interaction on Twitch, Viewer 1 stated that “I definitely would try to talk to the streamer and ask for something like tips or their opinions about certain things, for example advice in a game or something” (Viewer 1). Viewer 1 mentions asking for advice in the event that they would try to interact with the streamer they are watching, but not in the context of whether it is important for them as a viewer that the streamer they are watching is very skilled in the game. Viewer 4 had a different point of view regarding the importance of highly skilled streamers; “Since I watch streamers that play games that I play, it’s important that they have a high level of skill in the game so I can learn to be better as I watch them” (Viewer 4). As discussed in the interview, Viewer 4 plays a lot of competitive First-Person Shooters, so it makes sense that they value being able to learn from the streamers they watch. Lastly, we have Viewer 5 who has a similar outlook to Viewer 4 but does not place as much importance on high skill in the streams they consumer; “it’s the main character I play in the game so seeing someone else’s perspective and gameplay is very educational for me” (Viewer 5). So, while Viewer 5 enjoys this aspect of some of the streamers that they watch, it is not the most important factor for them.
5.8 Motivations to Watch / Stream Streamer’s Perspective In our interviews an overwhelming amount of focus was placed on the third places streamers have built as a motivator to continue streaming, while the motivators that led them to stream differed from one another.
Streamer 1 says “People said some really nice things about how my stream helps them to feel better, and less alone, and look forward to some fun chatting every evening and so on. It really helps people. Once I realized that that was a permanent motivator.”(Streamer 1), expressing how his ability to entertain and accompany people through his stream has left a huge impression on him which has become a central driving force for him to maintain and improve the third place he offers to people. Streamer 4 talks about her position in response to the support and trust of her viewers: “It all motivates me to do more so I always try to be live as much as I can. I’m struggling with it right now because I’ve been sick for the past few weeks but I’m still trying my best.” (Streamer 4), where, similarly to Streamer 1, she communicates her commitment to the third place she has built considering what she means to her stream and her community. We believe that the enthusiasm, support, and gratefulness of those participating in the third place towards the streamer is an extremely powerful motivator that roots itself in the positivity of genuine and kind human interaction, which then leads to streamer to deeply care about what they have created and those benefiting from it, themselves included.
Money and the pursuit of their passion is what led Streamer 5 into streaming: “I love playing games, so I’ve always looked at trying to make money from them. [...] That’s how it started like “hey, I can actually make money here”.” (Streamer 5). We believe this to be a rather reasonable and realistic opinion, yet very interesting as it was the only answer of its type. Most other streamers started their streaming careers by simply pursuing it as a fun thing to do, a hobby with human interaction at its core. Like streamer 3 already expressed before: “I just thought it would be fun to interact with people that are playing the game.” (Streamer 3). She is by no means alone in this, as it seems like a majority of the streamers, we interviewed shared a similar story when it comes to what drew them into streaming. Streamer 2 says “Since I play one game pretty much only, I might as well stream some parts of my gameplay in a sense of 48
like extra site money, just making some boring aspects of the game a little more interactive and stuff” (Streamer 2), which showcases a middle ground between making money and searching for interaction and entertainment at a personal level. Yet another different perspective to motivation to start streaming comes from Streamer 4 where she was simply inspired by a big streamer at the time: “I actually used to watch SodaPoppin a lot and I really enjoyed his content and I was like “I want to do that”.” (Streamer 4). In conclusion it seems that the joy of interaction is a big force pulling people into the platform and streaming as a hobby, while the financial possibilities and viewing it as a potential job lurks in the streamers’ minds as an achievable dream that might develop into a core motivator once their community grows and success follows.
Viewer’s Perspective When it comes to watching a specific Twitch streamer, different viewers had different motivations. Viewer 1 explained that “Typically it’s mostly about how I feel about the person, are they boring to me, does he have insights in which I’m interested in, and also does his humor resonate with me, that’s a very important part” (Viewer 1). This response relates back to many of the viewer’s responses on how ‘chemistry’ between themselves and the streamer must be present before they start tuning in to a streamer’s broadcast regularly. Viewer 4 takes this answer a step forward by adding in the factor of being able to learn from a streamer’s broadcast; “I’d say I’m drawn to them because they’re funny, they have interesting things to say about the game and they’re some of the best ranked players in the game at the moment so I learn a lot while I watch their stream” (Viewer 4).
Viewer 2 had an interesting viewpoint regarding why they watched Twitch; “For me Twitch is a replacement for television, you don’t necessarily follow everything on television but it’s nice to have it on in the background sometimes and whenever it’s something interesting that you want to watch you put it on” (Viewer 2).
5.9 Personality Streamer’s Perspective The final theme we have identified is that of personality. Streamers discussed this concept a lot, referring to it as a selling point, a core attribute to their brand, as well as a key driver to build genuine connections with their viewers. “I have a caring and outgoing personality. I don’t act tough or anything, I wear the soft on the outside and people tend to like it.” (Streamer 1) is how streamer 1 explains his belief that his personality plays a central and unique role when it comes to connecting with his audience and creating a comfortable third place for himself and his community. An important point he highlights is that a relatable and interesting personality could affect customer retention, but not generate consumer attraction “Obviously it [personality] is not what makes people click on my channel since they don’t know me, don’t know who I am. But the ones that do and choose to stay and come back do it for my personality, definitely.” (Streamer 1), which is not an opinion shared by all our interviewees, however we think that some truth can definitely be attributed to it.
Personality was also highly debated in our interviews considering on-stream and off-stream personality. A few of the streamers we interviewed mentioned this distinction “I’m an advocate for keeping things real and actually speaking my mind rather than being a fake” (Streamer 6) is how streamer 6, rather bluntly, explains it. We were under the impression that having an on- stream persona that differs from one’s real personality was slightly frowned upon by some of our interviewees, but given the success of a variety of streamers that have an over-the-top on- 49
stream personality we think that the actual issue some streamers have is not with the fabricated personality itself, but with its possible effects on founding a virtual third place. Streamer 2 however, recognizes that he sometimes has a different personality when he is streaming “It’s situational, I would say that I have two personalities, one is very laid back and very focused on having fun [...] and the other one is being what we would call ‘sweaty’ where, you know, you’re super efficient, the game becomes less about having fun and more about making sure you’re spending your time on the game well” (Streamer 2). Streamer 6 also describes himself as “I’m the sarcastic and opinionated friend, and that’s who I am on stream. It’s still me, I just tone it down a notch in real life.” (Streamer 6) when asked about how his personality is on stream. We think this has to do with comfort and the controlled space that the streamer has. Streamer 6’s personality is not necessarily different; it’s just enhanced in the virtual context of his stream. We believe this can take place because, while real life has face to face interactions in a wide variety of contexts, being a streamer that plays a specific game and interacts with people within that setting alone can make the streamer feel more comfortable and in control, resulting in some personality traits being enhanced.
Another side of this discussion came in the form of personality consistency: “I would try to avoid controversial topics and issues, because my brand is kind of laid back and drama is something I wouldn’t want” (Streamer 3) as streamer 3 exemplifies. The actions streamers take and the topics they decide to introduce and talk about during their stream seems to be shaped by the kind of personality they portray. We believe that because streamer 3 does not want to talk about certain topics on-stream, yet they would otherwise like to talk about them off-line, a level of division between on-stream and off-stream persona seems to exist. This division does not mean that her personality is fabricated, but that awareness of the setting she is in and her position as a public figure can limit the extent to which she showcases her personality, an opposite effect to that presented by streamer 6 where the limited and controlled space of his stream gave him the confidence to enhance his.
Viewer’s Perspective The personality of a streamer was something that viewers mentioned a lot in the responses, each having their own idea of the way a streamer’s personality was important to them and how it affects their Twitch viewing experience. Viewer 2 states that when it comes to deciding which streamers they enjoy; “If they have an interesting personality then I’ll definitely tune in again” (Viewer 2). Viewer 1 on the other hand said that “I think personality is definitely important, but I wouldn’t say that personality is the only thing that matters” (Viewer 1). This points to the fact that while personality is important for most viewers, it is not the only thing that matters for a viewer to enjoy a specific streamer.
On the other hand, some viewers see a good personality as a sort of hygiene factor where it is not the only thing that is being judged but if a streamer has a bad personality they will not even think about the other factors. This idea is further strengthened by both Viewer 4 and Viewer 2 as Viewer 4 states that “I’d say personality triumphs over skill in most cases as I won’t watch a skilled player stream if I don’t like their personality” (Viewer 4), and Viewer 2 states that “you don’t want to watch someone who’s streaming that’s constantly being rude, or being toxic as well” (Viewer 2).
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6. Analysis and Model Discussion In this chapter we will conduct a thematic network analysis using the findings presented in the chapter above and will allow us to analyse the qualitative data. With the derived global themes we then re-evaluated our conceptual model with the intention of arguing in favour of or against each concept that was introduced. Our goal is to identify the areas of our model that are supported by the insights provided by our interviewees, as well as those that are not in order to ultimately shape it into something that we believe describes the outcomes and intricacies that revolve around personal branding and the development of a third place through a streaming platform.
6.1 Thematic Network Analysis From the thematic analysis of the responses provided to us from both the viewers and the streamers, we managed to identify the global themes, organizing themes, and basic themes present within the answers. From these themes we can highlight what we believe to be the most important factors of success from both the perspectives of a viewer and the perspectives of a streamer.
Since the interview questions were created with the theoretical framework in mind, the global themes are the theories that this research paper is based upon; personal branding, virtual third places, customer delight & satisfaction, and brand loyalty. The organizing themes and basic themes will be discussed in the context of their global themes. The following table (Table 1) presents the results of our thematic network analysis.
Global Themes Organizing Themes Basic Themes Branding and Sponsors Viewer understanding of sponsorship and branding Reactions to corporate sponsorship Branding efforts Negative aspects of branding Branding Reasons to brand Things that constitute a brand Personal Branding Effects of branding Brand consistency Differentiation as a branding strategy Identifying USPs Importance of personality Types of personalities Personality Effects of certain personalities Personality consistency Genuinity 51
Online/Offline consistency Genuine interaction Interactions inside of Twitch.tv Importance of chat interactions Interactions and Multi-channel engagement challenges engagement Maintaining a healthy third place Identifying success factors Building interaction patterns Feeling of belonging Drawbacks of a large streamer Virtual third places community Reasons to not participate in a community Effects of a streamer's personality on Online Community their community Connecting viewers with each other Organizing events with community members Dealing with toxicity Collective personality of a community Diffusion of information Education Motivation to watch Types of Twitch viewers Motivations to Entertainment and education watch/stream Community as a driver for a streamer Pursuit of money and/or passion as a Customer Satisfaction motivator and Delight Evolving consumer needs Satisfying new viewers Enhancing viewer experience Customer delight and Importance of keeping content fresh satisfaction Meeting expectations Addressing customer expectations Viewer involvement
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Standard loyalty Different types of loyalty Disinterest in finding a new streamer to watch Loyalty Effects of personality on loyalty Brand Loyalty Forming loyalty with viewers Companionship Strengthening community Reasons to donate Support a Streamer Subscribing Deciding who to support Table 1: Thematic network analysis findings
6.2 Personal Branding The first global theme is that of ‘Personal Branding’. Within this global theme there were two organizing themes that ‘organized’ the basic themes. The organizing themes of personal branding are branding, and personality. Both of which are important factors inherent to the theory of personal branding. To find the basic themes from the interviews, we highlighted important snippets of responses from both the streamers and the viewers and categorized what the responses were discussing. These basic themes are essentially what the viewers and streamers thought was important in its context.
The basic themes relating back to branding are branding and sponsors, viewer understanding of sponsorship & branding, reactions to corporate sponsorship, branding efforts, negative aspects of branding, the reasons to brand, things that constitute a brand, effects of branding, brand consistency, differentiation as a branding strategy, and identifying USPs. These basic themes help us as researchers understand not only what is understood by those that were interviewed but also what streamers and viewers alike believe to be important factors for, in the case, personal branding. Philbrick and Cleveland (2015) highlight the importance of clearly communicating who you are as a central mechanism of personal branding, be it in a business, academic, or entrepreneurial context (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015, p. 183). Streamers and viewers alike agreed that personal branding is an essential component of streaming on Twitch as one's personal brand is composed of everything that the streamer makes public, everything from the overlays and aesthetic of their stream to the games they play and the way they interact with their community. Aligning with Lampel and Bhalla’s work (2007), a streamer’s status is tied on what they “broadcast” to the world, as well as what viewers themselves tell others (Lampel and Bhalla, 2007, p. 440). As such, having a defined personal brand is of utmost importance for streamers, and requires the interaction and positive opinion of people, resulting in the streamer’s ability to attract corporate sponsors as well as helping viewers understand who the streamer is through them.
For the second organizing theme relating to personal branding, we have personality. The concept of personality was heavily featured in the responses of both the viewers and the streamers. The basic themes that fall under personality are the importance of personality, types 53
of personalities, effects of certain personalities, personality consistency, genuinity and online/offline consistency. The fact that there are only 6 basic themes related to personality highlights the idea that viewers and streamers alike agreed on how personality is important, the different types of personalities that can exist within a streamer (and subsequently their community) and the importance of the consistency of personalities. When it comes to influencers on social media, one can project an identity close to their ideal self, enabling the formation of a virtual identity that can trigger “powerful emotions on the part of those who engage in the process” (Lampel and Bhalla, 2007, p. 442). This further emphasizes how personality can be a driving force for one’s personal brand, especially when “engaging in the process” that Lampel and Bhalla (2007) mention when it comes to virtual interactions is uncut and extends for hours like in the context of live streaming. Maintaining an identity that projects an ideal self is not easy when it comes to streaming due to the lengthy sessions, which is why the aspects of genuinity and consistency when it comes to personality is highly valued by the viewers.
6.3 Virtual Third Places The second global theme is that of ‘Virtual Third Places’ with two organizing themes: interactions & engagements, and online community. Under the Interactions & Engagement organizing theme we have the basic themes of genuine interaction, interactions outside of Twitch, importance of chat interaction, multi-channel engagement challenges, maintaining a healthy third place, and identifying success factors & building interaction patterns. The consensus with the interviewees was that interaction is a vital aspect for viewers in terms of enjoyment of a stream, and a vital aspect for streamers in terms of how they build their community. Oldenburg and Brissett (1982) put a lot emphasis on the importance of playfulness and genuine social interactions that are not based on an ulterior motive other than the satisfaction of engaging with another human being (Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 271-272). Therefore, interaction plays an integral part when it comes to a streamer’s channel and community doubling as a virtual third place. Without interaction, viewers can feel that the streamer is not worth viewing and may stop watching and existing viewers can feel alienated and have the potential to stop viewing as well. Streamers also have many different avenues for interaction like Twitter, Instagram, and Discord and can be quite vital for increasing interaction, especially if the streamer has a large following.
The second organising theme under Virtual Third Places is that of Online Community, with the basic themes being; feeling of belonging, drawbacks of a large streamer community, reasons to not participate in a community, effects of a streamer’s personality on their community, connecting viewers with each other, organizing events with community members, dealing with trolls, and the collective personality of a community. The difficulties of managing a large community was a recurrent theme throughout most of the interviews where interaction and engagement can be severely hampered due to the sheer number of people trying to get the attention of the streamer. These issues can be remedied using other platforms with the aim of ‘filtering’ out viewers who are not interested enough to join. For example, many streamers will have a Discord server where not only interaction, but discussions and conversations can be fostered as it requires effort (or even a subscription) to join a streamer’s Discord server. The collective personality of a community can also be a deciding factor for many regarding their desire to join a community. The feeling of belonging, or the desire to feel ‘at home’ was also a major driver for viewers who wanted to join a community, and subsequently is a factor that streamers must learn (if they have not already) to foster within the viewers if the streamer’s intent is to grow the community. This longing for a place to belong to is addressed by 54
Duchenaut et al. (2007), as they discuss this human necessity in the context of multiplayer video games. As we argued in our theoretical framework, a streamer centered around playing video games provides an alternative to playing the game itself, a space where the “grind” is removed and with it the stressors related to the game are reduced ( Duchenaut et al., 2007, p. 135). This ultimately leads to the attribute of sociability found in a third place, which in its purest form is defined as the “sheer pleasure of the company of others” (Simmel, 1949 cited in Oldenburg and Brissett, 1982, p. 271), which can be found in the virtual third place that is a streamer’s community through whatever channels they occupy.
6.4 Customer Satisfaction and Delight The third global theme is Customer Delight & Satisfaction. This theme relates to the ways in which streamers can satisfy the viewer in a way that leads the viewer to believe they cannot reach the same level of satisfaction from other streamers. This global theme was not as present as ‘personal branding’ or ‘virtual third places’ but this was to be expected. The four organizing themes that fall under this global theme are that of diffusion of information, motivations to watch/stream (depending on the perspective taken), and customer delight & satisfaction.
The organizing theme diffusion of information was not as prevalent as we had thought it would be. The only basic theme under this is education. Simply put, some viewers put a lot of importance of being able to learn from a streamer, if they are highly skilled in their game of choice for example, and some streamers put a lot of emphasis on trying to be the best they can at their game of choice to entice new viewers. Providing educational content is therefore a strategy that some streamers opt into, but the efforts put into making their knowledge palatable for their viewers aligns with Barnes et al.’s (2016) concept of “delight”, as they are an attempt to exceed the viewers’ expectations through expertise, a quality that is proven to affect customer delight through joy (Barnes et al., 2016, p. 283).
The organizing theme motivation to watch/stream included the basic themes of motivation to watch, types of Twitch viewers, entertainment & education, community as a driver for a streamer to continue streaming, and money and/or pursuit of passion as a motivator. Once again, this organizing theme was not as prevalent as first imagined. Motivations can vary from person to person but at its most basic level, viewers are motivated to watch for enjoyment or due to their desire to support a specific streamer, and streamers are motivated by their community and the desire for money or simply chasing their dream. This of course does not come as a revelation to us as researchers due to our experience, but we believe it to be important to detail regardless.
The last organizing theme is Customer Delight & Satisfaction. This organizing theme has the same name as its global theme as this relates perfectly to the business theories of customer delight and customer satisfaction. The basic themes are evolving consumer needs, satisfying new viewers, enhancing viewer experience, important of keeping content fresh, meeting expectations, and addressing customer expectations & viewer involvement. For viewers to be entertained, there must be something that catches their eye. This could be anything from the streamer’s personality, the streamer’s skill level, or even the aesthetic of the stream. In addition to this, it is vital that streamers can both manage viewer expectations and then meet those expectations. We found that meeting expectations is very important as viewers will not come back to a stream if they believe that they are not being entertained as they believed they would. Expectations can also hinder a streamer as they must find a balance between keeping content fresh and meeting expectations. This finding contributes to the understanding of customer 55
delight in the context of live streams. Barnes et al. (2016) present the idea of customer delight as a concept with a stronger relationship to loyalty and consumption than customer satisfaction, arguing that one must aim to exceed expectation and not just meet them (Barnes et al., 2016, p. 277-278). However, in the context of live streams this might not be as clear due to exceeding expectations requiring a certain level of action, and those actions might affect the offering of their broadcast, potentially upsetting a segment of their audience. If a streamer can find that balance, they will be able to both grow their viewer base and maintain their current viewer base.
6.5 Brand Loyalty The final global theme is Brand Loyalty which discusses what makes a viewer loyal to a specific streamer and how a streamer can invoke loyalty from a streamer. The two organizing themes under Brand Loyalty are Loyalty and Support a Streamer (only a viewer perspective can be taken regarding this theme).
Under the Loyalty theme, we have the basic themes of standard loyalty, different types of loyalty, disinterest in finding a new streamer to watch, effects of personality on loyalty, forming loyalty with viewers, companionship & strengthening community. We found that the most important factor to ensuring loyalty in viewers is when streamers regularly and continually meet their expectations. This is due to the fact that viewers will always return to a streamer if their expectations of how they will be entertained is continually met. Of course, over time a viewer’s expectations may change and as stated earlier, it is up to the streamer to figure out how to continually meet these ever-changing expectations. When a viewer is loyal, they may react in different ways. For example, some viewers might not even try to find other streamers to watch simply because they know their favourite streamer will entertain them and engage with them to a sufficient degree. Streamers can also invoke loyalty through companionship with their community. For example, if viewers are able to form relationships with both the streamer and other viewers in a community, they will not be willing to leave the community because of the companionship it affords them. The ability to build emotional ties is best depicted by Gounaris and Stathakopoulos’ (2004) premium loyalty, as it combines the alignment of values by both the brand, in this case the streamer, and the customer, in this case the viewer, with high levels of consumption, which is best represented by the viewer’s engagement and participation (Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004, p. 301). This point highlights the importance of a streamer’s personality in the sense that viewers who are able to relate to a streamer are more likely to form a relationship with both the streamer and the community, and thus will be loyal to that specific streamer.
The last organizing theme under Brand Loyalty is supporting a streamer, and as such can only be looked at through the perspective of the viewers. The basic themes are reasons to donate & subscribe and deciding who to support. The desire to support a streamer can be rooted in many different factors, for example a viewer might want to support a streamer if they consume the streamer’s media constantly and want to give something back in the form of a donation or subscription. Fournier and Yao (1997) explain how relating to a customer’s life themes can invoke strong levels of loyalty (Fournier and Yao, 1997, p. 461). The viewer’s loyalty can then be explained by the human nature of a streamer’s personal brand, and how that brand might have an easier time representing similar and relatable values to those of the viewer. This human to human relationship becomes very personal, more so than one between a brand and a consumer. Streamers must be able to give the viewers a reason to support them which could be anything depending on the viewer. As such it can be quite a large task for many streamers. 56
Personal Virtual Third Customer Brand Loyalty Branding Places Satisfaction and Delight
Core The cornerstone It emphasizes Delight needs to be Brand-consumer Findings to success as a interaction and carefully managed relationship is streamer. An engagement as in the context of strengthened by the area that affects the means to streaming. Meeting genuinity and the streamer’s meeting the changing “human nature” of ability to both requirements for expectations is the streamer’s attract an the streamer’s needed but changing personal brand. audience and community to offering to meet Strong emotional maintain a become a third them can have ties are therefore community. place. negative outcomes. built, leading to high levels of participation and willingness to support.
Personality … it is the … it helps … it complements … it brings a is central forefront of the determine the delivery of humane factor to because... brand. It dictates necessary efforts that lead to the brand, enabling whether or not attributes of a meeting and/or the building of the viewer’s third place, exceeding strong emotional values are namely those of expectations. ties that directly addressed in the sociability and Personality itself affect the viewer’s streamer’s playfulness. can also be an loyalty. brand. attribute that results in satisfaction or delight. Table 1: Review of Qualitative Findings 57
7. Conclusion In this chapter we will review the purpose of our thesis and explore the extent in which we have managed to answer the research question. The theoretical contributions that our study has achieved will also be discussed together with the implications in regard to streamers and streaming in general. In addition, we will explain the limitations we have encountered as well as calling out the possibilities for further research in the field.
7.1 General conclusions
Our purpose while writing this thesis was to gain further knowledge about the role that personal branding plays in relation to brand loyalty in the context of a virtual third place. We set out to research the outcomes of customer satisfaction and customer delight as the viewer’s emotional ties to the streamer’s brand, and their sense of belonging to the virtual third place assist in meeting and exceeding their expectations, which ultimately leads to the viewer\s desire to support the streamer. To achieve this, we have conducted a qualitative study with both major actors, namely streamers and viewers, and analysed their inputs using a thematic analysis. This allowed us to explore both groups’ perceptions of a streamer’s personal brand, their opinions on Twitch live broadcasts as a viable virtual third place and its management, and the attractive attributes that lead to the viewers’ desire to support a stream. By conducting semi-structured interviews with both groups, we acquired deeper understanding on the topic from two different perspectives, and we have answered our research question:
How does personal branding influence brand loyalty, customer satisfaction and delight within the context of a virtual third place?
Our qualitative interviews with streamers resulted in findings that highlight the importance of personality as a central component of any streamer’s personal brand and leads to the creation of the virtual third place they manage. Another key point highlighted in our interviews with them is that of the streamer’s role in the virtual place, as they both manage and moderate it, but also indulge in the benefits of healthy social interaction the third place facilitates. These spaces tend to originate from the streamer’s personal wants, as they are initially drawn into streaming because of their desire to interact with people with a similar interest, eventually becoming the central component of their community and confirming the existence of third places in the context of live stream channels.
Our qualitative interviews with viewers helped us better understand that while a third place is of value to some viewers, it might not be to others; and that while a viewer’s desire to support a streamer is heavily influenced by their loyalty to them and the viewer’s sense of belonging to the given third place, these are not the only determining factors to a streamer’s success and community support.
Finally, by processing and combining the information we gathered from both groups, we identified some differences in their perceptions in some areas. The viewers provided insight on the role of the community itself in a virtual third place, where, unlike the streamers thought, the streamer is not the sole responsible for maintaining a healthy third place but each individual member has the capacity to affect everyone else’s experience, giving everyone some degree of individual responsibility. While the role of personality was already much more important than 58
we initially believed it to be from the streamers’ input alone, the extent of this importance was further emphasized by the viewers where they described it as going a lot further than simply being a core attribute of a streamer’s brand, but trickling down the whole system and being a driving force for viewer engagement and interaction, resulting in satisfaction and delight when their expectations are met and exceeded.
7.2 Theoretical contribution Soukup (2006) introduced Oldenburg’s traditional concept of third places into a virtual context. Our qualitative study builds on his arguments and further expands the idea of virtual third places as technology continues to develop and new possibilities for genuine social interaction, like live streaming platforms, emerge. Previous studies by Duchenaut et al. (2007) and Halvorson (2010) have introduced multiplayer video games as spaces with the capacity to bring people together in a similar fashion to third places, even through limitations regarding communication. Our study shows that the field of video game live streaming has been able to remove such limitations and enhance the users experience to bring it closer to that found in traditional third places. Given the times during which this thesis was developed and conducted, where COVID-19 has shut down most possibilities for social interaction, the ability to meet these social needs virtually is extremely important for many people. Exploring virtual third places in the context of live streaming showcases the potential they have to be a source of genuine human interaction and lead to the many benefits attributed to these kinds of spaces.
We expand on the field of personal branding, which has gained popularity in current times through the growth of social media and its influencers. Given the concept of “dialogue” presented by Vitberg (2010), our study highlights the important role that personal branding plays in the live streaming context where the dialogue between streamer and viewer is constant, presenting many opportunities to push information. It is important to understand that live streams transcend the communication levels between influencer and customer traditionally seen in other social media platforms. Our research addresses these “hyper-communicative” forms of entertainment that rely heavily on personal branding and emphasize the importance of personality, to the extent where it becomes the “be all end all” that dictates whether or not a streamer’s personal brand resonates with the customer.
From the interviews with the viewers, we believe we have managed to prove that the four types of loyalty (no loyalty, covetous loyalty, inertia loyalty, and premium loyalty) discussed by Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2004) do apply in the realm of live streaming.
7.3 Implications for Streamers We believe that our research can aid new and potential streamers better prepare themselves for their streaming career. By understanding the process by which viewers judge different factors like personality and entertainment, we believe that streamers can then focus their efforts on instilling a defined personal brand image in conjunction with focusing on the personality traits that their community enjoys. It is also to the benefit of the streamer to understand the process that viewers experience when deciding on whether a community is for them so that the streamer can facilitate things like constant interaction with an emphasis on genuine engagement. These are the factors, based on our viewer interviews, that viewers crave in relation to a streamer’s online community.
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The effects of sponsorships on viewers are also detailed which can aid a streamer regarding what types of brands they should accept sponsorships from. It all depends on the values exhibited by the brand in the minds of the viewer and whether these values are reciprocated by the streamer. While this is common knowledge regarding sponsors in other realms of knowledge like professional sports, it is important to have evidence that it functions in the same manner in the realm of live streaming as sponsors are a big part of live streaming
Ways of fostering loyalty in viewers, as detailed in chapter 5 should also be considered by streamers as the loyal viewers are usually the ones who provide the most value for a streamer. In addition to this, streamers must set up different mechanics that benefits and rewards a viewer’s loyalty. This can be anything from exclusive emotes, exclusive memberships or clubs, or discount codes to be used at carefully decided brands or locations.
7.4 Societal Implications In the ever-more-digitalized world we live in, the genuinity and validity of online social interactions is often understated and are considered to provide little value to individuals. We believe that our research can help with developing a better understanding of social interactions in a virtual context. We argue for the similarities between traditional third places and those in a digital setting and present our results on the existence of these and the benefits that they may yield.
The context of the current COVID-19 pandemic has prevented people from gathering and interacting with each other. If virtual alternatives to physical locations were more spread and generally accepted, they would be instrumental for the upkeep of overall social well-being. This highlights the importance of why virtual third places should be fostered and certainly are an alternative to traditional ones. The drive to participate in an open-minded and welcoming place where genuine social interaction takes place is the same regardless of whether said place has a physical location or not, and the availability of such spaces virtually should be more widespread.
By evaluating the tools at a person’s disposal to create healthy virtual third places, we want to bring forward the notion that these spaces can be set up and managed by anyone. As stated in the interviews with streamers, their initial drive to build a community was simply their longing for social interaction within their area of interest, which in our study is video games. There are a variety of platforms available that can be used as a foundation for a virtual third place, but the intimacy of live streaming helps provide a layer of genuinity to it.
7.6 Truth Criteria To establish the quality of our research, we must discuss the two factors of reliability and validity. Reliability is defined as “the accuracy and precision of the measurement and the absence of differences if the research were repeated” (Collis and Hussey, 2014). Whereas validity refers to “the extent to which a test measures what the researcher wants it to measure” (Collis and Hussey, 2014). With the guidance of the measures discussed by LeCompte and Goetz (1981) we will assess both the reliability and the validity of our research.
External reliability refers to the ability of a research paper to be replicated by others (LeCompte and Goetz, 1981). Although the aim of this research paper was to better understand the social phenomenon in question through other means than analytical tools, we as researchers wanted 60
to ensure as much reliability as we could. The first guideline laid out by LeCompte and Goetz (1981) was to consider the extent to which the researchers were a part of the studied groups, and what kind of positions were held by the researchers. As researchers, both of us take part in watching Twitch making us members of the “Viewers” group that we studied. As such, we hold experience with Twitch, streamers, other viewers, and other types of popular culture present within Twitch. We believe this prior experience allowed us to have a good starting position regarding what types of questions to ask both viewers and streamers, as well as having a general understanding on which theories to utilize to explain the phenomena being studied. In addition to this, we aimed to ensure that our past experiences did not interfere with or create biases that could affect the analysis of the answers collected from the viewers and streamers.
The second guideline laid out by LeCompte and Goetz (1981) is that of informant choices, where it is vital to consider who is providing data for the research. As such we tried to ensure that different demographics were represented in the sample size of both viewers and streamers. We did this by interviewing streamers from different countries, streaming different genres of video games, as well as aiming for proper gender distribution. For the viewers, it was harder for us to define their demographics before the interview as they are not as public as streamers. Social situations and the conditions under which the data was collected must also be considered (LeCompte and Goetz, 1981). For example, the effect of COVID-19 on the growth in viewer counts (TwitchTracker d. 2020) is a factor that has the potential to affect the type of data collected from the interviewees and thus we have outlined this and other potential impacts from these factors in the chapters above. The external reliability of our thesis is furthered by the explicit identification of our assumptions as researchers, discussions of potential impacting factors, and contextual and environmental information that we believe the readers of this paper must understand in order to understand our research (LeCompte and Goetz, 1981).
The final guideline to consider is that of methods of data collection and analysis (LeCompte and Goetz, 1981). This ensures that if other researchers wish to replicate our study, they can use our scientific methodology and practical method chapters as an outline on how to conduct the study. These chapters outline exactly what the research will be, how it will be administered, as well as discussing the relevance of our chosen theories in the context of live streaming. Thus, we believe we have followed the guidelines of external reliability by LeCompte and Goetz (1981) to the best of our ability as researchers.
Next is the concept of internal reliability, which discusses the need for multiple researchers to be congruent on the theories in use as well as how the studied phenomena are described and concluded (LeCompte and Goetz, 1981). We believe that we have achieved internal reliability due to our combined experience with the realm of Twitch and live streaming as well as our ability to discuss with each other the directions the research should take.
Lastly, LeCompte and Goetz (1981) discuss the importance of both internal and external validity. Internal validity refers to whether our research measured what we intended to measure whereas external validity refers to the ability to generalize the findings of a study to the larger population (LeCompte and Goetz, 1981). As stated by LeCompte and Goetz (1991) qualitative studies have a high level of internal validity due to the fact that the researchers create the measures being used based on qualitative data and thus make it easier to measure what needs to be measured. In addition to this, we utilized the semi-structured interview format for the express reason of being able to allow the interviewees to speak freely as to get as much information from them as possible. Lastly, external validity with our study can be considered 61
quite low, but is not a main concern for us as our intention was never to generalize the results to a wider population but to investigate different theories in the context of live streaming.
7.7 Limitations and Future Research We believe that the main limitation with our study was simply the time that it conducted in. COVID-19 made it very hard for us to get into contact with streamers and convince them to take part in our study as their time had become much more valuable due to the fact that the average viewers online at any given time on Twitch had risen substantially. Research on the specific topic of live streaming is also very limited and/or outdated which made it a struggle to decide certain practical methodological options. In addition to this, we did not have any access to the very large and popular streamers. This made it somewhat difficult to discuss how personality, brand loyalty, customer satisfaction and delight affected extremely large virtual third places.
For future research, we suggest that other researchers examine our conceptual model and conduct a similar study on a larger and different sample population. This would help highlight differences in demographics studied and whether our findings apply to all live stream viewers and streamers. Finally, we suggest that research be conducted with the focus solely on virtual third places in other forms of social media.
While we have set an understanding of the role of personality in personal branding, and the outcomes of personal branding that can be expected in the context of a virtual third place, we call researchers to explore this to topic further. We suggest exploring other business administration aspects of live streaming platforms due to the lack of research of this fast- growing industry. Conducting a similar study but in a much larger scale could also help validate our findings due to the relatively small size of our sample. A mixed method or fully quantitative study of the viewer’s side could also assist with developing a broader and more generalizable understanding of the viewer’s expectations of a streamer. When it comes to virtual third places, we call for researchers to keep pursuing deeper knowledge in this field, as concise research on this sociological phenomenon can prove to be useful in a wide variety of fields, as well as help with clearing the negative preconceptions that shroud it.
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Appendix Appendix 1: Graph 1: Viewership Comparison (TwitchTracker b, 2020)
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Appendix 2:
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Appendix 3: Graph 2: Twitch viewership during COVID-19 Quarantine (TwitchTracker d, 2020)
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Appendix 4:
Interview Guide for Streamers: Questions Theoretical links
What is your name?
How long have you been streaming for?
What drew you into streaming?
Are you a full-time streamer?
Branding questions
Do you think it’s important to build a brand for your Personal branding stream?
What are the core attributes to your personal brand? Personal branding
What initiatives do you take to attract viewers? Personal branding + brand loyalty
Is your Twitch persona the same as your offline Personal branding in a virtual context personality?
Community building and third place questions
How actively do you interact with your Aiming to make a virtual community into a third community/following? place
Do you use other platforms than Twitch to interact Locality of a virtual third place with them?
Are there any considerations you take into account Personal branding + consumer expectations in the when posting or interacting with your followers? third place
Do you aim to build a friendly and open community? Third place criteria If so, what do you do?
Is the community that you have built in Twitch a ???? Streamer motivation???? motivator to continue streaming?
How do you deal with trolls/toxic community Third place criteria members?
Consumer outcomes questions
Why do you think people are attracted to your Core offering - brand loyalty stream?
Is it enough to just stream in order to maintain and Customer Satisfaction vs Customer Delight grow a following?
What type of activities do you think keep the viewers Exceeding expectations - Customer Delight interested and engaged?
In business terms, what do you think are the unique Attracting customers - Customer Satisfaction selling points of your stream? 72
Do you have any “regulars” in your stream? Brand loyalty and Third places
What do you think has influenced their loyalty? Tying Brand Loyalty to Customer Satisfaction and Delight
What do you think is what drives viewers to become Brand Loyalty loyal?
Closing Questions
Is there anything you would like to add as to what Open-ended question → Interviewee’s opinion on drives people to watch streams? consumer behavior
Thank you! (?)
Interview guide for Viewers: Questions Theoretical links
How old are you? Demographic-related questions
What do you do? (work, study, etc) Demographic-related questions
How often do you watch streams? Demographic-related questions
What kind of streams do you usually watch? Demographic-related questions
Stream attractiveness questions
What draws you to a specific streamer? Building ties - Brand loyalty
Are there any characteristics that you consider a must Requirements for satisfaction in order to enjoy a stream? (Set up, web cam, mic, personality traits, etc)
What role does a streamer’s personality play when Brand loyalty + satisfaction → importance of watching a stream? personal branding for a viewer
Streams as a third place questions
Are there any particular streamers that you seem to Focal point of attraction to a specific community gravitate towards?
Do you consider yourself as part of their community? Virtual third place criteria
Do you actively participate in Twitch chat? Virtual third place criteria
What is the nature of your interactions on Twitch? Defining the kind of discourse in the third place (talk to streamer, talk to others in chat, spam and react, etc)
How do you evaluate a streamer’s social media Locality of the third place from the viewer’s presence? (is it important to you, etc) perspective
Do you use other social media to interact with the Evaluating viewer’s willingness to participate in the streamers you enjoy? third place
How do you engage with them and the community in Virtual third place criteria these other platforms? (passively liking posts, leaving 73
comments, having conversations with others, etc)
Brand loyalty questions
Are you loyal to any particular streamer? Brand loyalty set up
What has driven you to want to support them? Factors that influence brand loyalty in a live stream context
Have you even financially supported a streamer? Premium brand loyalty amongst twitch viewers (donations, subscriptions, etc)
How do you feel about streamer’s with a defined Personal branding perception “brand image”? (is it attractive, worth it, feels “fake”, etc)
Delight and Satisfaction questions
What factors make you want to be part of a Factors attributed to customer satisfaction and delight streamer’s community?
How do you feel about steamers that regularly interact Perception of streamer’s efforts to exceed with their viewers and community? expectations, or taken for granted → Delight vs Satisfaction
What is important for a streamer to do in order to Efforts to spark joy and surprise → Customer Delight keep their viewers entertained?
Is innovation, in your opinion, necessary to grow and Delight vs Satisfaction → Is delight needed? maintain a viewer base?
What do you think about streamers taking up Monetization attempts effects on satisfaction and sponsors? Do they affect your perception of them? brand image
Closing questions
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Thank you!