Abstract

Purchase through mobile apps (m-commerce) is on the rise. While this phenomenon is affecting any consumers cohort, millennials represent the lion’s share among m-commerce users. Businesses are anyway struggling to better obtain the attention of a younger consumers. Indeed, the more competitors start to use m-commerce, the more differentiating communication strategies get difficult. To continue to attract the consideration from younger consumers, marketers are therefore adopting gamification as a strategic marketing lever. Thus, gamified advertisings -which are advertising characterized by high interactivity and game-like features- are becoming a trending topic in marketing literature. Building on Use and Gratification Theory (UGT) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the research wishes to explore how consumers’ experience deriving from Gamified Advertising (GAMEX) could contribute to the creation of consumers’ benefits and their intention to purchase trough a mobile app. How gamification experience could correspondingly shape the attitude toward advertising has also been considered. To achieve the aim of the research, a structural model was tested trough data collected from 315 millennials living in the UK. Results show how a relationship between gamification induced experiences could foster in-app purchases. Anyway, such a connection is mediated by perceived consumer-benefits, their attitude toward advertising, and perceived advertising effectiveness. Gamified advertising thus can be effective if it could foster social, personal, hedonic and cognitive benefits, and whether gamification is perceived coherent with the advertised product/brand pair.

摘要

通过移动应用程序（移动商务）进行的购买正在增加。虽然这种现象正在影响任何消费者群体，但千禧一代代表了移动商务用户中的最大份额。无论如何，企业都在努力更好地吸引年轻消费者的注意力。事实上，越多的竞争对手开始使用移动商务，差异化的沟通策略就越困难。为了继续吸引年轻消费者的关注，营销人员因此将游戏化作为一种​​战略营销手段。因此，游戏化广告——具有高交互性和类似游戏特征的广告——正在成为营销文献中的热门话题。基于使用和满足理论（UGT）和计划行为理论（TPB），该研究希望探索来自游戏化广告 (GAMEX) 的消费者体验如何有助于创造消费者利益以及他们通过移动应用程序购买的意图。还考虑了游戏化体验如何相应地塑造对广告的态度。为了实现研究的目的，我们通过从居住在英国的 315 名千禧一代收集的数据对结构模型进行了测试。结果显示游戏化诱导体验之间的关系如何促进应用内购买。无论如何，这种联系是由感知的消费者利益、他们对广告的态度和感知的广告效果来调节的。因此，如果游戏化广告能够促进社会、个人、享乐和认知方面的益处，那么它就可以发挥作用，