The Boundaries of Gamification for Engaging Customers: Effects of Losing a Contest in Online Co-creation Communities

Thomas Leclercq, Wafa Hammedi and Ingrid Poncin
Additional contact information
Thomas Leclercq: LEM - Laboratoire d'éthique médicale et médecine légale - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - Réseau Inserm de Recherche en éthique médicale, LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Ingrid Poncin: UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Despite the increasing use of gamification mechanics to engage customers in firms' activities, the risks related to such use remain unclear. To address this knowledge gap, this research examines the impacts of losing a challenge, which is a phenomenon experienced by the majority of customers involved in gamified settings but underexplored in literature. We investigate the context of co-creation communities by combining two widely used gamification mechanics, competition and cooperation. Results from three laboratory experiments and one field experiment show that win/lose decisions weaken the benefits of gamification and, in the case of losing a competition, have negative impacts on customer experience and engagement. They also demonstrate that customers' levels of prior engagement with the community moderate the negative impacts of losing a competition. Supported by equity theory, this research questions the effectiveness of gamification mechanics, identifies their limits, and provides guidelines on how to properly implement them.

Keywords: Gamification; Engagement; Co-creation; Online community (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Published in Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2018, 44, pp.82-101. ⟨10.1016/j.intmar.2018.04.004⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02115858

DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2018.04.004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().