Customer experience in gamified commercial websites: the impact of game difficulty and gameplays

Abstract

Despite companies’ increasing use of video games and advergames to interact with customers, gamification literature has so far barely explained how the gamification of a commercial website and the degree of difficulty of the games inserted in the website may affect online customer experience. To address this gap, and based on the flow theory, this paper analyses what effect inserting promotional advergames into websites has on online customer experience and customer behaviour, i.e., website traffic, intention to recommend, and intention to buy. It also explores the impact of game difficulty and its presentation through gameplays. We conduct two experiments with websites and advergames created ad hoc for this purpose. Results provide evidence on how gamification improves customer experience, website traffic and, indirectly, the intention to buy and recommend the website. The difficulty of the game is seen to increase user predisposition to recommend the website, whilst the introduction of gameplays does not improve the experience in an advergame context. Finally, e-commerce designers are advised to include promotional advergames that pose a difficult challenge. These challenges encourage users to recommend the website, and they increase traffic and the time spent on the site, without negatively affecting sales.