Explore How Gamified Interaction Affects Customer Brand Engagement In The Context Of E-commerce Platform

With the development of science and technology in recent years,the size of the player base has been on a steady rise since 2016,with China’s gaming market topping the global revenue charts.As a result,more and more companies are considering the integration of gamification elements into the marketing practices of their companies and brands,and the term"gamification marketing" has emerged,defined as the application of game design elements to non-game scenarios.In addition,the rapid growth of the internet has significantly reduced the cost of changing brands,suppliers or products for consumers,and their attention spans are largely fragmented.The primary difficulty for business owners is therefore how to attract and retain consumers on online business platforms,and Customer Brand Engagement(CBE)is seen as an important aspect of brand-based business performance.The main question in this paper is how gamified interactions affect customer brand engagement,which can be broken down into the following two questions:1)What levels of gamified interactions can be broken down into?2)How do different types of gamification elements bring different perceptions to the customer,thus influencing customer engagement and brand interaction behaviour?In order to address this issue,this paper takes e-commerce platforms as the main context,explores the influence paths of different types of gamified interactive elements on customer brand engagment,refers to the S-O-R theoretical model,applies the rooted theory research method,conducts in-depth interviews with twelve e-commerce platform consumers with more than five years of experience in large-scale video games,subsequently implements three-level coding of the data,gradually refines the categories,main categories,core categories and their interrelationships,and finally builds a full and complete theoretical framework.It has been found that gamification elements not only influence consumers’internal psychological perceptions and indirectly contribute to brand engagement through external economic stimuli,but also directly create a sense of identification and admiration for the brand through narratives and other elements,leading to a deeper understanding of the brand and purchase behaviour.What’s more,the previous white space’the use of a combination of gamification elements’ is answered to some extent.The innovation of this paper lies in the distillation of the main category of’heartflow’ as part of the psychological perception’ pathway.In addition,financial incentives are often a key element in prompting consumers to try gamified interactions for the first time,and as financial rewards accumulate,they can lead to sustained interaction and engagement.except for indirect effects,this paper also found that through the delivery of the corporate philosophy in a narrative way,it can directly influence consumers’ perceptions and goodwill towards the company,leading to greater trust in the brand,significantly higher brand perceptions and brand emotions,and even greater willingness to explore the behavioral aspects of the brand.Finally,despite the fact that the use of gamification is in full swing in practice,there have been some failed attempts that have turned off consumers and created negative feelings towards the brand.In this regard,we have collected and collated data from the consumer interviews to provide some management insights,and hope that this paper will provide some reference value for companies that are experimenting with gamification and interaction.