I've been molling this over in my head for awhile, a model of various phases of customer involvement involved in the purchase of tabletop roleplaying games. If someone wanted to point me to a better model, or critique this one, I'd be much appreciated:
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THE PURCHASE CYCLE:
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PHASE 1: The Customer is aware of your game.
PHASE 2: The Customer is intrigued and desires to learn more.
PHASE 3a: The Customer finds a way to play for free.(Piracy, playing with friends, free versions, demos)
PHASE 4a: The Customer attains the game for free (CONTINUE TO LEARN CYCLE)
PHASE 3b: The Customer perceives that the game is worth its cost.
PHASE 4b: The Customer knows how to buy your game.
PHASE 5b: The Customer buys your game.(CONTINUE TO LEARN CYCLE)
THE LEARN CYCLE:
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PHASE 1a: The Customer reads 'The Important Parts'.(CONTINUE TO GROUP CYCLE)
PHASE 1b: The Customer finds friends who will teach them (CONTINUE TO CHAACTER CREATION CYCLE)
THE GROUP CYCLE:
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PhASE 1a: The Customer 'pitches' the game to their existing group.
PHASE 1b: The Customer finds a group of people who they want to play with, that wants to play this game.
PHASE 2: The Participants schedule a time to play this game.(CONTINUE TO CHARACTER CREATION CYCLE)
THE CHARACTER CREATION CYCLE:
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PHASE 1: The Customer learns how to create characters.
PHASE 2: The Customer follows the procedures to create a character (CONTINUE TO PLAY CYCLE)
THE PLAY CYCLE:
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PHASE 1: The Customer plays the game.
PHASE 2: (Optional) The Customer learns to play better.
PHASE 3: The Customer becomes committed to further play for an approximate time.
PHASE 4a: The Customer is content with all purchases of this game.(END)
PHASE 4b: The Customer views purchasing additional materials as enriching to their play expierience of this game. (This may be purchasing the book in the first place, or purchasing supplements, or whatever.)(Prcoess starts again for new material)
PHASE 5: (Optional) The Customer is interested in playing more roleplaying games of the same "brand" (Company, Title, Designer, 'Scene', whatever)(Process starts again for new material)
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I've delinated distinct phases based on the idea that after a phase, a customer is facing some kind of barrier to involvement, and is likely making a decision whether or not to increase their level of involvement or disengage from the process.
Working on the theory that the surest ways to make the customer decide to NOT disengage from the process are (a) Form adequate investment at that point that the customer is disinclined to lose it, and (b) promise them something neat just over the hill of that next stage of involvement, it makes sense to think of optimizing the system as a process of -forcing- the customer to increase their investment (Whether of time, money, what have you) while presenting them some kind of immediate reward for doing so every little step of the way.
- Sean Musgrave