Customer Experience in Gamified Commercial Websites: The Impact of Game Difficulty and Gameplays

Abstract

Despite companies’ increasing use of video games and advergames to interact with customers, gamification literature has so far barely explained how the gamification of a commercial website and the degree of difficulty of the games inserted in the website may affect online customer experience. To address this gap, and based on the flow theory, this paper analyses what effect inserting promotional advergames into websites has on online customer experience and customer behaviour, i.e., website traffic, intention to recommend, and intention to buy. It also explores the impact of game difficulty and its presentation through gameplays. We conduct two experiments with websites and advergames created ad hoc for this purpose. Results provide evidence on how gamification improves customer experience, website traffic and, indirectly, the intention to buy and recommend the website. The difficulty of the game is seen to increase user predisposition to recommend the website, whilst the introduction of gameplays does not improve the experience in an advergame context. Finally, e-commerce designers are advised to include promotional advergames that pose a difficult challenge. These challenges encourage users to recommend the website, and they increase traffic and the time spent on the site, without negatively affecting sales.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Junta de Castilla y León (Spain) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) [project reference VA219P20] and by the Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness (Spain) [project reference ECO2017-86628-P].

Notes on contributors

Elías Vega

Elías Vega is a PhD Candidate in Consumer Behaviour and Digital Marketing and is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Valladolid (Spain). His research focuses on online consumer behaviour and digital marketing.

Carmen Camarero

Carmen Camarero, PhD in Business Administration, is Professor of Marketing at the University of Valladolid (Spain). Her research focuses on relationship marketing, online consumer behaviour and marketing in cultural organizations. She has published in several international refereed journals (Tourism Management, Journal of Service Research, Psychology & Marketing).

Ana Gutiérrez-Arranz

Ana M. Gutiérrez Arranz, PhD in Business Administration, is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Valladolid (Spain). Her research focused on advertising and digital marketing. Her research results have been published in Internet Research, International Journal of Information Management, and Computers in Human Behaviour, among others.