Leveling up retail: How retailers and brands thrive in the video game ecosystem

The global video game industry, valued at over $180 billion, has become a powerful platform for consumer engagement, allowing retailers to connect with over 3.2 billion global players. Despite recent research into the video game ecosystem, there is a noticeable gap in understanding how retailers and brands engage consumers, and how their sometimes overlapping roles reflect distinct strategies and capabilities. Drawing on 30 qualitative interviews with video gamers as well as prior research, we identify eight distinct roles retailers and brands can adopt within gameplay (i.e., experience regulators, background immersion facilitators, goal reinforcers, and experience expanders) and beyond gameplay (i.e., content enablers, experience tools, community experience providers, and emotional redirects). Our findings highlight the potential of the video game ecosystem for retailers and brands to support immersive consumer experiences, support divergence from reality, prepare brands for next-generation consumers, and integrate value creation. To facilitate these decisions, we propose a framework for retailers and brands to engage effectively within this space, emphasizing seamless integration, co-creation of value, and transparency. We conclude with the ‘PLAY’ framework to highlight future research directions across a variety of retailing domains. By aligning retail strategies with the unique characteristics of the ecosystem, this research provides actionable insights for retailers, brands, and scholars, advancing retail innovation and encouraging exploration of this dynamic, evolving landscape.