Value creation in gamified chatbot interactions and its impact on brand engagement

Gamification is a powerful instrument to motivate consumers to intensify their brand relationships. Though this potential, the effects of enriching chatbot interactions with gameful experiences on brand engagement has not been studied. To fill this gap, this study tries to understand how gamification contributes to customers’ value creation in a gamified conversational context and how this value creation relates to brand engagement. Specifically, we investigate whether and to what extent the hedonic and utilitarian values provided in interactions with gamified chatbots affect cognitive, emotional, and behavioral brand engagement. Based on an empirical study involving a fully functional gamified chatbot, we show that the perceived hedonic value has a major impact on all three brand engagement dimensions, and especially the cognitive dimension. Utilitarian values, though not related to the cognitive dimension of brand engagement, significantly boost the emotional and the behavioral engagement dimensions. These findings point to the potentials of extrinsic and utilitarian motivations for boosting brand engagement also in entertainment-oriented settings like gamified chatbot interactions.