Gamification in Digital Marketing Platforms A Study of Attitudes and Intentions of Users

Abstract

Business organisations are now focusing on new strategies to provide better consumer experiences, thereby enhancing their engagement with the brand. The marketing perspective has changed by focusing beyond the mere transactional obligations. This has necessitated companies to adopt immersive technologies to obtain immediate gratification from the consumers, where gamification holds a significant position. Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game contexts to enhance user engagement. The experiential outcome of the gamification process is called a gameful experience. It acts as a mediator between the gameful system and the behaviour caused by the system. The effectiveness of gameful experiences in the marketing platform is highly dependent on the demographic, psychological, and design factors, and how it acts as a mediator between these factors and the behavioural intentions of the users. The current study aims to understand the factors influencing gameful experiences of users and their subsequent impact on the attitude and behavioural intentions of users of a gamified digital marketing platform. The study is descriptive and analytical in nature. The study is based on primary data, and it has also acquired secondary information from the past literature.The primary data were collected from the users of the selected gamified digital marketing platform through a structured questionnaire. The study has adopted the snowball sampling method by considering the nature of the study. In addition, the sampling process has applied the technique of temporal separation in order to reduce the instances of common method biases. The two-stage data collection has resulted in a sample size of 502 users. The collected data were analysed using percentages, descriptive statistics, ANOVA, post hoc analysis, CFA, and CB-SEM with the help of software packages such as IBM SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 23.0. The findings indicate that the demographic and the platform usage patterns of the users have a significant influence on their gameful experiences, attitudes and behavioural intentions in the gamified digital marketing platform. Further, results indicate that the perceived social influence of users has a broad and consistent influence on their gameful experiences, followed by self-efficacy, where personal innovativeness has a more limited and targeted influence. It highlights the importance of enhancing performance expectancy and perceived trust in the platform to positively influence user attitudes towards the gamified digital marketing platform. The findings underscore the importance of designing gamification strategies that are immersive, enjoyable and mentally stimulating to extend favourable user outcomes including attitudes and brand affection. Finally, results highlight the importance of improving both brand affection and utilitarian value to promote positive behavioural intentions towards the brand and the gamified digital marketing platform. The findings providetheoretical contributions to the academic community, which always intends to understand the effectiveness of innovative marketing tools on consumer behaviour. The study provides insights for marketers and gamification designers to create gamification strategies to foster engaging consumer-brand interactions in the evolving context of digital marketing and immersive technologies