The Relationship Between Gamification, Brand Engagement and Brand Equity

Gamification refers to the design that attempts to bring about similar positive experiences as games do, and consequently, affect user behaviour and cognitive processes [6].  In the marketing realm, gamification has been used by many enterprises to improve advertising performance [10, 12], engage customers [4, 9] and enhance perceived brand value [11]. Especially in brand management, many international companies adopt gamification techniques to increase consumers’ brand awareness, brand attitude and brand loyalty, such as Where’s Waldo on Google Map, Ant forest of Alipay and Samsung Nation online community, etc. Although gamification has offered a novel way for marketers [2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11], the mechanisms of how gamification may impact brand success remains  unclear due to lack of empirical evidence within this field. Relevant research that has examined the relationship between gamification and brand equity is still at an initial stage, mainly focused on brand attitude [10, 11], brand engagement [1, 4] and brand involvement [8], lack of in-depth discussion. Brand equity, as one of the important goals of social media marketing, only received limited attention in the gamification-related literature. Therefore, the objective of the present paper is to investigate the relationship between customers’ interaction with different gamification features and emotional, cognitive and social brand engagement and further brand equity in social commerce. We employ an online survey conducted among consumers (N=824) from gamified  brand communities of Xiaomi and Huawei, which are two of the successful gamified services in China. 

The Relationship Between Gamification, Brand Engagement  and Brand Equity

Nannan Xi
Juho Hamari

Citation: Xi, N., & Hamari, J. (2019, January). The relationship between gamification, brand engagement and brand equity. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. DOI:10.24251/hicss.2019.099

Please see the paper for full details: 
Journal
ResearchGate

Abstract

Many companies  are increasingly attempting to build and manage brand communities that increasingly resemble games and game communities and believe that this gamification can increase the engagement and loyalty of consumers to the brand. However, currently, there is a  dearth of empirical evidence supporting these expectations in the realm of marketing beyond the pervasive hype around gamification. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the relationship between gamification features, brand engagement and brand equity among consumers (N=824) from both of Xiaomi and  Huawei online brand communities through a psychometric survey. The results indicate that achievement and social-related features are positively associated with emotional, cognitive and social brand engagement. Immersion-related features are positively associated with social brand engagement. Furthermore, all dimensions of brand engagement are further positively associated with  brand equity. The results imply that there is a positive chain relationship between gamification, brand engagement and brand equity, and that, gamification appears to be an effective tool for brand management. 

Reference:

[1] A. Berger, T. Schlager, D. E. Sprott, and H. Andreas, “Gamified interactions: whether, when, and how games facilitate self–brand connections”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 81(2), 2017, pp. 1-22.
[2] J. Hamari, “Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens: A field experiment on gamification in a utilitarian peer-to-peer trading service”, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), 2013, pp. 236-245.
[3] J. Hamari, K. Huotari, and J. Tolvanen, “Gamification and economics”, The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015, pp. 139-161.
[4] T. Harwood, and T. Garry, “An investigation into gamification as a customer engagement experience environment”, Journal of Services Marketing, 29(6/7), 2015, pp. 533-546.
[5] C. F. Hofacker, K. De Ruyter, N. H. Lurie, et al., “Gamification and mobile marketing effectiveness”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 34(5), 2016, pp. 25-36.
[6] K. Huotari, and J. Hamari, “A definition for gamification: anchoring gamification in the service marketing literature”, Electronic Markets, 27(1), 2017, pp. 21-31.
[7] J. Koivisto, and J. Hamari, “The Rise of Motivational InformationSystems: A Review of Gamification Research”, Working paper, 2017.
[8] H. Nobre, and A. Ferreira., “Gamification as a platform for brand co-creation experiences”, Journal of Brand Management, 24(4), 2017, pp. 349-361.
[9] M. Sigala, “The application and impact of gamification funware on trip planning and experiences: The case of TripAdvisor’s funware”, Electronic Markets, 25(3), 2015, pp. 189-209.
[10] R. Terlutter, and M. L. Capella, “The gamification of advertising: analysis and research directions of in-game advertising, advergames, and advertising in social network games”, Journal of Advertising, 42(2-3), 2013, pp. 95-112.
[11] Y. Yang, Y. Asaad, and Y. Dwivedi, “Examining the impact of gamification on intention of engagement and brand attitude in the marketing context”, Computers in Human Behavior, 73, 2017, pp. 459-469.
[12] M. Yang, D. R. Roskos-Ewoldsen, L. Dinu, et al., “The effectiveness of ‘in-game’ advertising: Comparing college students’ explicit and implicit memory for brand names”, Journal of Advertising, 35(4), 2006, pp. 143-152.