The Impact Of Unlocking Mechanism On Consumers’ Persistence In The Context Of Gamification Marketing

In the digital age,how enterprises can attract consumers to the maximum extent,stimulate their continuous participation,and enhance consumer stickiness has become an important topic of concern for marketing experts and scholars in recent years.Especially for industries and fields that emphasize long-term goals and require willpower and persistence to achieve ultimate results,whether consumers can continue to participate directly affects their satisfaction and loyalty.However,in the process of participation,the efforts and costs paid to achieve the ultimate goal are often very high,and the benefits brought by the ultimate goal cannot be immediately realized.Therefore,enterprises urgently need to build some special mechanisms to help consumers resist the interference of inertia and temptation,promote their investment and participation in the goals,and achieve long-term goals smoothly.Game,as a form of relaxation and entertainment,have always been popular and loved by people.Especially in recent years,in marketing scenarios such as ecommerce shopping,sports and fitness,online brand communities,and online education,gamified marketing has shown great advantages in terms of emotional and participatory aspects,helping enterprises encourage overall value creation for users in the process of optimizing customer experience.However,there have been few empirical studies on the important mechanism of unlocking in gamification marketing in the past.Starting from this,this study mainly explores the impact of unlocking mechanism on consumers’ sustained participation behavior in the context of gamification,and introduces the theories of expected regret and cognitive closure needs to explore their internal mechanisms.The proposed hypothesis was validated by designing three random experiments,exploring the internal mechanism and boundary conditions for the unlocking mechanism to produce better results.Specifically,experiment 1 proposed a more effective unlocking mechanism by changing the independent variable design,and verified the Main effect;Experiment2 verified the Main effect again by changing different task materials to increase the robustness of the results;Experiment 3 validated the mediating effect of net expected withdrawal regret and the moderating effect of cognitive closure needs.Therefore,this study draws three conclusions: firstly,compared to non unlocking tasks,unlocking tasks are more effective in promoting consumers’ sustained participation in long-term goals;Secondly,net expected exit regret plays a mediating role in the impact of unlocking mechanisms on sustained participation;Thirdly,cognitive closure needs to regulate the impact of unlocking mechanisms on sustained participation.High cognitive closure requires individuals to exhibit longer sustained participation in the unlocking mechanism,while low cognitive closure requires individuals to exhibit no significant difference in sustained participation with or without unlocking mechanisms.In summary,this study mainly explores the impact of unlocking mechanisms in gamified marketing on promoting consumer sustained participation,and explores the mediating role of expected regret and the moderating role of cognitive closure needs.In terms of theory,this study helps to enrich empirical research on gamified marketing,supplement and unlock the research gap of this gamified element,while expanding the explanatory scope of expected regret theory and enriching theoretical research on the need for cognitive closure.In practice,it provides an effective method for enterprises to promote consumers’ adherence to long-term goals,while also helping consumers resist the interference of inertia and temptation,improve their self-control ability,promote continuous participation,and successfully achieve long-term goals.