A definition for gamification: anchoring gamification in the service marketing literature

By Kai Huotari, Juho Hamari. Electronic Markets, 2016

974 citations recorded by the source corpus.

“Gamification” has gained considerable scholarly and practitioner attention; however, the discussion in academia has been largely confined to the human–computer interaction and game studies domains. Since gamification is often used in service design, it is important that the concept be brought in line with the service literature. So far, though, there has been a dearth of such literature. This article is an attempt to tie in gamification with service marketing theory, which conceptualizes the consumer as a co-producer of the service. It presents games as service systems composed of operant and operand resources. It proposes a definition for gamification, one that emphasizes its experiential nature. The definition highlights four important aspects of gamification: affordances, psychological mediators, goals of gamification and the context of gamification. Using the definition the article identifies four possible gamifying actors and examines gamification as communicative staging of the service environment.

Subfields: Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c1f900b2ae87bc0ac0de32042f3bbc7f58b2d58

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Marketing

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Gameful Experience in Gamification: Construction and Validation of a Gameful Experience Scale [GAMEX] (2018, methodology): “Although gamification is a hot topic, there is no proper measurement instrument for capturing the emotional and involving qualities of gamification, that is, gameful experiences (Huotari and Hamari 2017).”
Creating brand engagement through in-store gamified customer experiences (2019, background): “Thus, our results indicate that the interactive and co-created gameful experience (Huotari and Hamari, 2017; Högberg et al., 2019) can be such customer experiences that lead to brand engagement.”
Gamification of health professions education: a systematic review (2020, neutral): “…2013; Burke 2014; Burkey et al. 2013; De Sousa Borges et al. 2014; Domínguez et al. 2013; Gaggioli 2016; Hamari et al. 2014; Hsu et al. 2013; Huotari and Hamari 2012, 2017; Kumar 2013; Muntean 2011; Perrotta et al. 2013; Robson et al. 2015; Simões et al. 2013; Warmelink et al. 2018; Zuk…”
Does gamification affect brand engagement and equity? A study in online brand communities (2020, positive): “Gamification refers to the design approach that attempts to bring about similar positive experiences as those seen in games, and consequently affect user behavior and cognitive processes (Hamari, 2019; Huotari & Hamari, 2017).”