Designing gamified transformative and social marketing services

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to extend transformative service and social marketing practitioners’ and academics’ understanding of how gamification and serious m-games are designed, and second, to model the effects of game design elements on key transformative service and social marketing outcomes, satisfaction, knowledge, and behavioural intentions. Design/methodology/approach The research adopted a two-study, mixed-method research design, encompassing focus groups (n=21) and online surveys (n=497), using four current marketplace serious m-games. Study 1 was qualitative and the data were analysed in two cycles using an inductive and deductive approach. Study 2 was quantitative and the data were analysed using PLS-SEM. Findings The qualitative results of Study 1 discovered a framework of five game design elements for serious m-games. In Study 2, a conceptual model and hypothesised relationships were tested at a full sample level and by each serious m-game. Results show different significant relationships for each serious m-game and moderate to high levels of explanation for satisfaction and knowledge, and low to high levels of explained variance for behavioural intentions. The findings are therefore not only robust across four different serious m-games, but also demonstrate the nuances of the relationships. Originality/value This research contributes to two service research priorities: leveraging technology to advance services, and improving well-being through transformative services. This research demonstrates that gamification through serious m-games is one form of technology that can be designed to create a satisfying and knowledge-creating service experience, which can also influence intentions to perform health and well-being behaviours.

Creating Loyal Prosocial Transformative Service Consumers: A Proposed Model With Direct and Indirect Effects

“…Thus, our novel theorizing presents an important framework for predicting real-world prosocial loyalty and the customer value typologies that may then influence the sustainability of a prosocial transformative service. Confirms and extends the significant relationship of satisfaction and loyalty in prior health care and transformative service studies (Mulcahy et al, 2018;Zainuddin et al, 2013) Attitudinal loyalty H9. Attitudinal loyalty will have a direct effect on behavioral loyalty…”

Gamification and online consumer decisions: Is the game over?

“…However, gamification in consumer contexts defines the concept of "challenging" as "activities or actions which provide opposition to be overcome by the player" [80, p. 287], and "meaningful" as activities that are useful or gratifying in their own right. Therefore, in the online consumer decision context, being challenging is associated with game elements such as competition, levels, goals, and tasks [59,[83][84][85], and being meaningful is associated with interactivity, aesthetics, functionality, control, and platform [82]. Both mechanisms are considered reward-based gamification.…”

Reward‐based or meaningful gaming? A field study on game mechanics and serious games for sustainability

“…We also suggest that “do–learn–feel” is a more appropriate lens for theorizing in comparison to other hierarchies of effects (e.g., “learn–feel–do” and “do–feel–learn”) to understand serious games both theoretically and practically. First, a review of the serious game literature in marketing demonstrates that knowledge is often a primary focus (Hamari et al, 2016) and has also been shown to mediate the impact of consumers' game experience and other desired outcomes (Mulcahy et al, 2018), which suggests “do–learn,” rather than “do–feel.” For instance, Mulcahy et al (2018) demonstrate that the impact of game design elements on behavioral intentions for a range of health behaviors is mediated by knowledge. Thus, their research hints at a sequence initiated by “do” (interact with game design elements via serious games), followed by learn (with knowledge undertaking a mediating role).…”