Title: The impact of gamification features on customer brand engagement: a study in entertainment mobile apps

Authors: Amir Reza Konjkav Monfared; Mohammad Ghaffari; Mohammad Nematpour; Mohammadreza Barootkoob; Milad Mohebali Malmiri; Leila Malekpur

Addresses: Department of Management Sciences, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran ' Faculty of Management and Accounting, College of Farabi, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' Faculty of Management and Accounting, College of Farabi, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Management Sciences, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran ' University Canada West, Vancouver, Canada ' Department of Management Sciences, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

Abstract: This study aims to develop a conceptual model to investigate the influence of the main features of gamification (entertainment, interactivity, innovation, and sociability) on customers' brand engagement in terms of emotional, cognitive, and behavioural dimensions on SnappQ as the online social and entertaining application. A survey employing researcher-developed-questionnaire was conducted by collecting data from 233 customers using SnappQ in Iran. The structural equation modelling method was employed to investigate research hypotheses. The findings of this study revealed that gamification features have a significant relationship with customer brand engagement. Following the findings, employing gamified services and gamification features in online social and entertaining platforms help managers to satisfy customers' psychological needs, and this leads them to have to learn the manner of managing their customers to engage them profitably. The findings help marketing managers/practitioners to understand how to enhance customers' motivation to engage with the desired brand by designing different gamification features.

Keywords: gamification feature; customer engagement; cognitive engagement; emotional engagement; behavioural engagement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMC.2025.149384

International Journal of Mobile Communications, 2025 Vol.26 No.4, pp.377 - 401

Accepted: 04 Sep 2024
Published online: 28 Oct 2025 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article