What we know and need to know about the gamification of advertising

Abstract

Purpose Advergames, or integrated brand messages within digital games, have received considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. Despite increased use of advergames as a brand promotion strategy by a range of well-known brands, limited understanding exists about a number of issues related to the effective use of such games. This paper aims to critically review the literature on advergames by performing a detailed analysis of existing research in this area and propose an organizing framework. Based on this framework, the authors discuss key issues with current understanding and propose important questions for future research. Design/methodology/approach This literature review follows Webster and Watson’s (2002) concept-driven systematic review methodology elaborating on the key antecedents and consequences identified in advergame studies (what we know: current knowledge), followed by the discussion of key factors that should be investigated as antecedents and consequences (literature gaps). Findings This paper presents a review and synthesis of advergame studies based on Terlutter and Capella’s (2013) integrated marketing communication framework. It identifies game, individual and social factors and suggests how these factors could affect a consumer’s brand-related cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral responses. The authors further propose an advergame framework that identifies two different “unit of analysis” (antecedents and consequences of game factors and antecedents and consequences of individual and social factors), which can be used by scholars to center their research efforts in a more detailed fashion. Research limitations/implications Research questions posed in this literature review indicate that future research in the area of advergames should focus on investigating the effects of various game, individual and social factors on consumers’ cognitive, affective and behavioral responses. Practical implications The advergame framework provided here provides firms with a guide to the factors that may affect their consumers’ cognitive, affective and behavioral responses and helps them in developing effective advergames. Originality/value The paper provides a comprehensive review of the advergame literature that has not been done before and develops a general advergame framework that can be applied in all contexts and will guide future studies in the area. Overall, the study helps the researchers to identify critical issues and concepts related to advergames and shapes future research in the field.

The Gamification of Branded Content: A Meta-Analysis of Advergame Effects

“…By doing this, we excluded papers that used stimulus games which were conceptually "games containing ingame advertising" rather than "advergames." In particular, we identified several papers that inconsistently operationalized advergames (e.g., Vashisht and Sreejesh 2015;Vashisht and Pillai 2017) and had to exclude these papers after close inspection of the stimulus materials. In most cases, the stimulus games were labeled advergames but were conceptually games containing in-game advertising.…”

Does the Need for Cognition, Need for Affect and Perceived Humour Influence Consumers’ Attitudes Towards the Advertised Brands?

“…NFC is thus, known as an issue pertinent to thinking and can be defined as the ability or motivation an individual has to process message or information (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Recent evidence in advertising suggest that consumers with high NFC favoured brand entailing verbal and textual information more as compared to that entailing visual and audio information (Burton, Gollins, McNeely & Walls, 2018;Kim, 2019;Myers & Jung, 2019;Vashisht, Royne & Sreejesh, 2019). This is true as those with high cognitive ability prefer messages or information necessitating deep evaluations, whereas those with low cognitive ability prefer simple and attractive cues (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).…”

Gamification: Main approaches to definition and research directions

“…Применение игровых механик и эле ментов в неигровом контексте с целью изменения поведения пользователя [Deterding et al, 2011;Hofacker et al, 2016;Mekler et al, 2017;Hsu, Chen, 2018] Процесс улучшения оказываемых услуг с помощью акцента на создание игрового опыта и ощущения «полноты восприятия игры» с целью создания дополнительной ценности для потребителя [Huotari, Hamari, 2017;Hsu, Chen, 2018;Eppman, Bekk, Klein, 2018;Mullins, Subherwal, 2018] Контекст исследования Обучение, включая онлайнобразование и обучение персонала компаний [Aparicio et al, 2019;Ding, 2019] Онлайн-тестирование, прохождение опросов [Triantoro et al, 2019] Адаптация информационных систем [Mekler et al, 2017] Управление онлайнсообществами [Yang, Asaad, Dwivedi, 2017] Управление знаниями [Friedrich et al, 2019] Маркетинг [Leclerсq, Hammedi, Poncin, 2018] Развитие отношений потребителя с брендом [Nobre, Ferrera, 2017] Программы лояльности [Kim, Ahn, 2017] Управление потребительским опытом [Eppman, Bekk, Klein, 2018] Управление вовлеченностью персонала [Mitchell, Schuster, Jin, 2018;Ding, 2019] Предмет исследования Воспринимаемая простота использования [Yang, Asaad, Dwivedi, 2017;Koivisto, Hamari, 2019] Изменение количества и качества выполненных задач в системе [Mekler et al, 2017;Sailer et al, 2017; Van Roy, Zaman, 2019] Продолжительность использования системы [Groening, Binneweis, 2019;Hassan, Dias, Hamari, 2019] Реакция на рекламные сообщения [Vashisht, Royne, Sreejesh, 2019] Изменение отношения к системе [Huotari, Hamari, 2012;Hamari, 2015;…”

“…С помощью геймификации компании стремятся преодолеть пользовательские барьеры, связанные с рутинностью операций в информационных системах [Koivisto, Hamari, 2019], удаленным обучением [Huang et al, 2019;Van Roy, Deterding, Zaman, 2019], недоверием потребителей к рекламным сообщениям [Seiffert-Brockmann, Weitzl, Henriks, 2018;Vashisht, Royne, Sreejesh, 2019], а также стимулировать создание у них позитивных ассоциаций, что впоследствии может вести к лояльности, лучшему усвоению материала, упрощению внедрения новых систем и пр. [Seaborn, Fels, 2015;Rapp et al, 2018;Koivisto, Hamari, 2019].…”