Gamiﬁcation for Brand Value Co-Creation: A Systematic Literature Review

: Gamiﬁcation, commonly deﬁned as the use of game elements in non-game contexts, is a relatively novel term, yet it has been gaining popularity across a wide range of academic and industrial disciplines. In the marketing ﬁeld, companies are increasingly gamifying their mobile apps and online platforms to enrich their customers’ digital experiences. Whilst there has been a number of systematic studies examining the inﬂuence of gamiﬁcation on user engagement across different ﬁelds, none has reviewed its role in brand value co-creation. Following a systematic literature review procedure via the online research platform EBSCOhost, this paper is the ﬁrst to survey a set of empirical studies examining the role and impact of gamiﬁcation on brand value co-creation. A ﬁnal pool of 32 empirical studies implies the existence of four types of activities that are co-created by online users and positively inﬂuenced by gamiﬁcation, namely: customer service, insights sharing, word-of-mouth, and random task. Moreover, this paper highlights the major game dynamics driving these activities, the key ﬁndings of each of the covered studies and their main theoretical underpinnings. Lastly, a set of noteworthy research directions for future related studies are suggested, comprising the exploration of novel game elements, and new co-creation activities related to corporate social responsibilities and physical commercial operations. and rules should be carefully set to avoid counterproductivity. Perceived social value inﬂuenced by social interactions and social norms associated with the gamiﬁed system highly affect users’ behavioural intention towards brand value co-creation.


Introduction
Although relatively novel, the term of gamification, which first emerged around 2010, has since gained fast recognition across both the scholarly and practical domains [1]. Principally targeting users' engagement in order to promote behavioural changes [2,3], gamification is majorly defined as the use of game elements in non-game contexts [4]. It is comprised of game mechanics-also known as game functional components-such as points and leader boards, which in turn spark compatible game dynamics that trigger players' desires, like rewards and competition [5]. Although gamification can take the form of card decks and board games, modern gamified systems are mostly employed via digital means, such as web-based and mobile-based applications [6].
Nowadays, gamification has been widely applied in the educational and business sectors to promote engagement [7,8] and game elements are becoming increasingly embedded in students' learning processes [9] and employees' daily tasks [10]. Recently, an emerging base of evidence presented gamification as a promising strategy for improving students' learning [11,12] and employees' productivity [13,14].
Aside from its internal use in workplaces, business companies are also gamifying their external marketing activities, aiming to improve the digital experience of both current and potential customers [15]. While the broad concept of gamification "in" the marketing context embraces three types of gamified advertisements known as "Advergames", "In game advertisement" and "social network games" [16], these three do not meet the academic criteria of this term [17]. In contrast with the basic definition of gamification, known related activities, such as promoting, advocating, collaborating, and sharing knowledge with their companies [41], leading in turn to brand innovation and growth [42]. In brand value co-creation, "there is still lack of clarity in identifying different dimensions that constitute value for company" [43] (p. 452), which highlights the need for "more thorough exploration of the goals the companies seek and techniques of consumer engagement the companies use for it" [43] (p. 452).
Recently, numerous studies have systematically surveyed the use of gamification in different contexts, yet none have explored the influence of gamification on brand value co-creation. Through a systematic literature review, this paper addresses this gap and seeks to gauge the impact of gamified experiences on consumers' willingness to co-create, and the key factors promoting it. Hence, this paper aims to identify the different types of co-creation activities that are positively affected by gamification, along with the key game dynamics driving them.

Materials and Methods
All the way through attaining and managing an evidence-informed knowledge in the designated research context, a systematic review model is processed. This methodology has been chosen because of its transparent, effective, and comprehensible approach in gathering and analysing information [44]. Subsequently, a structured review protocol comprising of the key stages in management studies [45] has been developed as follows: • First, in an attempt to scan the widest number of relevant papers in the context of gamified co-creative environments, EBSCOhost online research platform was selected. The covered databases were EBSCO's private library, Gale Academic OneFile, The Directory of Open Access Journals, in addition to the four major databases embracing the largest number of papers in the subject area: ScienceDirect, Springer, Emerald and IEEE Xplore [46].

•
As gamification is only beginning to get substantial academic recognition since around 2010, the search query was set to cover the period between 2010 and 2020. Using the Boolean research technique for results' filtration and irrelevancy minimisation [47], the first search covered all papers that comprised a conjunction of the term "gamification" with each of the following terms in their abstract section: "GAMIFICATION and CO-CREATION" or "GAMIFICATION and CROWDSOURCING" or "GAMI-FICATION and SHARING ECONOMY" or "GAMIFICATION and CUSTOMER(S)" or "GAMIFICATION and CONSUMER(S)" or "GAMIFICATION and ONLINE and USER(S)". These terms were prudently selected, given their remarkable predominance across dozens of randomly selected papers in relation to the context of study, just prior to pursuing the searching process. The first stage of the search, which only covered papers written in English, resulted in a sample of 1073 papers, which were then automatically reduced to 783 following an exact-duplications removal. • Next, search inclusion criteria were set to solely hedge quality academic papers. Thus, only peer-reviewed academic articles and conference papers were filtered, leading to a result of 571 papers. • Subsequently, a manual check for each of the collected papers was processed to ensure that only empirical studies that examine the use of gamification for brand value co-creation in the B2C sector are kept. Consequently, 33 relevant papers were retained. • Finally, to ensure that no relevant articles were missed, a further manual check of the 571 papers was conducted. The revision has conversely resulted in withdrawing one paper out of the adopted pool, as it merely examines the impact of gamification on gig workers rather than end users, which does not match with the "B2C" inclusion criterion in the review protocol. The final number of adopted papers thus dropped to 32.

Results
This section features the key outcomes of the systematic literature review. In Table 1, a summary of the main empirical findings and their underpinning theories across the 32 studies is presented. Four profiles of participants were identified according to their level of engagement and participation in the co-creation activities: competitors, cooperators, coopetitors, and invisible users. The four profiles are respectively driven by the following motives: extrinsic rewards, social relatedness, collaboration on own projects, curiosity, and fun. In addition to the emphasized emotional and behavioural outcome of engaging in a gamified co-creation experience, cognitive outcome has additionally been revealed.
Piligrimiene et al. [43] Lithuanian companies N/A   Customers' continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation of behavior-based reward is significantly higher than that of result-based reward. The psychological benefit mediates the relationship between the game reward mechanism and customers' continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation.
Kose et al. [55] "   Incentive hierarchies motivate users to put higher effort before reaching goals, but lower effort afterwards. The impact seems to be temporary and counterproductive. Business relationship, rewards, competition, and fun are fundamental driving dimensions in the gamified experience. Users engage with gamified websites that begin with an easy task and then progress to more complex challenges. Users want rapid indications of success through virtual and monetary rewards. Websites must be attractive to users in terms of video game graphics and web page design.

Intangible rewards-Social interaction
Longitudinal field experiment Theory of planned behaviour-Social proof theory-Social influence theory-Social comparison theory-Flow theory The use of badges shows no significant effect on users' activity, yet users who actively monitor their own badges and those of others show increased activity on the website All the papers consisted of empirical studies that assess the role of gamification in online co-creation platforms-mainly websites and mobile apps-with only one study incorporating a further augmented-reality experience in a virtual smart store context [68]. Among the thirty-two studies, twenty-three are involved in real-life business cases, sixteen are associated with businesses of crowdsourcing nature, and four are related to the sharing economy industry which has been significantly thriving in recent years [36].

Co-Creation Activities
The examined gamified platforms promoted different sorts of co-creation activities across various industries, yet these diverse activities clearly manifested clusters of mutual characteristics. In order to identify each of these clusters, every single activity was scrutinised and associated with the ultimate objective it has been created for. Subsequently, four generic categories emerged, as follows: • Word-of-mouth (WOM): Referring to all kinds of online endorsements that users perform in promoting a brand or any of its products or services, either by sharing and forwarding brand related contents or inviting friends to join the community, e.g., recommending people to join "Samsung Nation" [72]. • Insights sharing: Implying all sorts of insightful information users provide to a company. This can take the form of systemised tasks, such as undertaking surveys, voting on suggestions, and sharing live data, e.g., participating in paid surveys at "Amazon Mechanic Turk" [73], voting on proposals at "Threadless" [69] or sharing live road data to "My Drive Assist" app [55].
On the other hand, the collection of insights can be formless, whereby users impulsively share their ideas, feedback, and recommendations with their companies, e.g., expressing ideas and opinions at "Huawei" and "Xiaomi" online platforms [57].

•
Customer service: Comprising all types of online assistance users provide to each other, such as answering questions, solving technical issues, or submitting helpful ratings and informative reviews about products or services, e.g., resolving users' IT enquiries on "StackOverflow" [65] or providing hotel/restaurants ratings and reviews on "TripAdvisor" [56,71]. • Random task: Involving all other activities besides "WOM", "Insights sharing" and "Customer service". This typically refers to on-demand tasks in crowdsourcing platforms or trading tasks in sharing economy websites, e.g., delivering projects on "ZBJ" [62] or posting trade proposals on "Sharetribe" [36].
Following a thorough data analysis of the findings presented in Table 1, the statistics displayed in Figure 1 show that "customer service" and "insights sharing" are the most prevalent types of co-creation activities, appearing in 17 and 16 studies, respectively, followed by a seven-time appearance of "WOM" and five-time appearance of "random task".

Game Dynamics
Just like the discrepancy in defining the game dynamics' elements throughout the literature [8], the reported papers similarly used inconsistent terms and notions. Hence, one consistent terminology has been developed in this study, adopting the terms and notions that were mostly referred to all across the papers.
The statistics in Figure 2 show that "intangible rewards", mainly carried through points and badges [75,76], is the most dominant game dynamic across all the case studies, appearing in 29 cases. The second most prevalent game dynamic is "social interaction", typically triggered by social drivers such as altruism and reciprocity [60,65], sense of belonging [57,71] and social network building [66,69]. Very close to "social interaction" falls "competition", commonly manifested through ranking tables and leader boards [58], then "tangible rewards" implying monetary prizes and gifts [75,76] with a respective appearance in 17, 16 and 13 case studies.  It is also worth mentioning that the remaining game dynamics which were less prevalent in the surveyed case studies have no cohesive conception in the gamification academic repertoire; however, they are generally recognised in the literature for embracing the following mechanics: •

The Crowdsourcing Industry
The statistics in Figure 3, which solely feature data from the crowdsourcing platforms, show that insights sharing is by far the most frequently employed type of co-creation activity, followed by "customer service", "random task" and "WOM". Furthermore, a significant ranking swap between "competition" and "social interaction" across crowdsourcing platforms was spotted, as shown in Figure 4.

Underpinning Theories
Although the surveyed studies were conducted in various fields and throughout different methodologies, Table 2 highlights the prominent theories underpinning most of these studies, along with the key findings associated with each theory. Table 2. Major underpinning theories and their related findings across the surveyed case studies.
Flow theory-Hamari [36]; Yoo et al. [66]; Sigala [71]; Harwood and Garry [72]; Hamari [74] Tangible rewards and mostly intangible ones leading to users' enjoyment and satisfaction positively influence their immersion in the gamified system and consequently, their co-creation activities with the brand. [36]; Jun et al. [54]; Ruiz-Alba et al. [59]; Hamari [74] Users are more determined by their psychological perception towards the game experience than by its expected rewards. Positive perception towards the expected behaviour and behavioural control positively influences their intentions to contribute to brand value creation. Perceived ease of use of the gamified system which is found relatively high among online users who are mostly young has positive influence on their perceived enjoyment and perceived usefulness, which in turn leverage their intentions towards contributing to brand value creation.

Theory of planned behaviour-Hamari
Goal setting theory-Kim et al. [53]; Morschheuser et al. [58]; Goes et al. [70] Gamified systems with clear goals have better influence on users' intention to engage and recommend it, yet games should be optional, and rules should be carefully set to avoid counterproductivity.  [74] Perceived social value influenced by social interactions and social norms associated with the gamified system highly affect users' behavioural intention towards brand value co-creation.

Results Interpretation
Besides interpreting the key findings of this study, this section points out a set of limitations and innovative research directions to be addressed in the future.
Despite the wide adoption in the literature of Huotari and Hamari's [1] proposed definition of gamification as a process for supporting users' overall value creation, there is still no unified understanding of such a value [20] and no way to clearly observe it empirically [63]. Upon identifying two types of users' value co-creation that are endorsed by gamification, labelled "experience value co-creation" and "brand value co-creation", the systematic survey conducted in this paper regarding the latter has revealed major findings to build on in future research.
Applying gamification in online platforms is found to positively influence four major types of activities that are co-created by users. In the conventional form of the business-toconsumer sector, firms are primarily using their gamified systems to encourage their users to undertake "customer service" and "insights sharing" activities, obviously given their impact on leveraging brands' familiarity and innovation. Crowdsourcing companies, in turn, are primarily using gamification to promote "insights sharing", followed by "customer service" and "random task". Surprisingly, word-of-mouth, which has been traditionally recognised as a key aspect in brand value co-creation [80], appeared in less than quarter of the thirty-two reported studies. In a primitive interpretation of this paradox, this could be linked to the findings of Nobre and Ferreira [40], who revealed consumers' impulsive tendency to spread positive word-of-mouth when enjoying the gamified experience, thus limiting firms' need to promote such a "spontaneous" activity through hedonic or utilitarian incentives. Moreover, all of the identified "random task" activities in the surveyed papers were remarkably executed within the sharing economy and crowdsourcing industries, where a large segment of firms promote trading activities and on-demand business projects respectively.
On the other hand, the data analysis of the employed game dynamics highlights a predicted predominance of "intangible rewards" across all the studied cases, given its pivotal role in promoting all other dynamics. Surprisingly, the prominent role given to "tangible rewards" in the literature was slightly surpassed by "social interaction" and "competition". This matches with the findings of Kavaliova et al. [69], who claimed users' inclination for fun and enjoyment over tangible returns when engaged in gamified experiences. In the crowdsourcing industry, "competition" is ranked second just after "intangible rewards", apparently reflecting the fierce environment companies tend to promote in this sector in order to get the most out of their employed contestants [81].
From a theoretical perspective, most of the prevalent marketing theories that were referred to across the surveyed studies match with those previously reported by Tobon et al. [3]. Additionally, the goal-setting theory, largely related to the flow theory, was found to be used in three studies. Furthermore, other social-related theories beyond "social influence" were reported, specifically: social-cognitive, social-comparison, social-exchange and social-proof theories. The findings of the studies involving these social-related theories showcase that, when it comes to brand value co-creation, users' psychology is fundamentally correlated with the perceived social value generating from their gamified experiences.
Overall, the findings of this study underline a positive correlation between users' enjoyment of the gamified experience and their intention to contribute to brand value creation. This relationship is found to be typically mediated by the hedonic value of various types of game dynamics that range from "intangible rewards", "social interactions", and "competition", to some less prominent ones, such as "motivational stimulus", "challenge" "customisation", "aestheticism, and "cooperation". It has been also realised that, unlike other game dynamics, "social interactions" plays a unique dual role that involves both hedonic and utilitarian values, whereby users concurrently enjoy the social interface and harness it to gain knowledge, promote their ideas, and build their private social networks. Tangible rewards on the other hand, merely providing utilitarian values [82], are found effective, yet less essential in shaping users' value co-creation experiences.

Limitations
Despite its insightful and promising outcomes, this paper has some limitations that could be further elaborated in future related research. First, the papers' scanning stage in the employed methodology was limited to one bibliographic search provider. Although major academic databases were selected, employing further search engines could have been of benefit. On the other hand, the paper only involves empirical studies in an attempt to understand the impact of gamification on brand value co-creation; however, plenty of reallife examples in various industries were omitted because no concrete findings are available to examine. Such missed opportunities should be addressed in future empirical studies, especially with respect to emerging industries such as the sharing economy which was only covered in this paper through four examples, two out of which related to the same brand named "Sharetribe". Another limitation embedded in this study lies in grouping together a wide range of co-creation activities under one proposed class, labelled as "random task". As random tasks could vary from very simple activities to highly professional projects, future studies can refine this further and split it into more visible sections. Such a segregation could be based on different criteria, such as the level of skills required from users, tasks' delivery time, or even the types of business industries these tasks belong to.
Furthermore, this study reviews the influence of gamification on users at a general scale, with no adequate information on their demographic attributes which could definitely help in better understanding the attitudes and behaviour of users towards gamified systems. The studied cases also lacked an examination of the actual and prospective implications of negative experiences on users' satisfaction and brand loyalty. Finally, although gamification was proven to be significantly effective in encouraging users to engage in co-creation activities, this has been majorly associated with their short-term monitored behaviour. As implied by Tobon et al. [3], there are still many doubts regarding the effectiveness of gamification on users' momentum on the long run.

Future Research Directions
In accordance with to the above-mentioned tips, future research should primarily consider gathering users' demographic attributes, as highlighted by Köse et al. [55], Nobre and Ferreira [40] and Ruiz-Alba et al. [59]. This can also include other aspects, such as their previous experiences and familiarity with game-based systems, as suggested by Xi and Hamari [57]. Indeed, this could serve to not only increase understanding of the behaviour of active users, but also passive and reluctant ones. Accordingly, further theories not previously approached in the literature could potentially be considered, such as the expectancy-value theory and the expectation-confirmation theory, in order to evaluate the impact of users' presumptions on their actual behaviour. On the other hand, the implications of negative gamified experiences and the misuse of game mechanics should also be explored, whereby many signs of users' dissatisfaction have been noticed and need further investigations [41,69,72].
Above all, this literature review opens the floor for further studies to explore novel ideas around the use of gamification for brand value co-creation. The intriguing fantasy dynamic driven by the in-store technology interface example [68] raised the importance of considering innovative gaming features. This might involve the application of advanced technologies, such as augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality. On the other hand, the promising findings of the virtual CSR experiment [54] highlighted the potential role of gamification in promoting end-users' contribution to actual CSR activities. Although real-life examples in this field might be limited, this certainly reflects a major opportunity for researchers to undertake conceptual and experimental related studies. Last but not least, the digital nature of the "random task" activities reported in this paper opens the scope for researchers to explore the possibility of using gamification for fostering users' co-creation of physical tasks, typically with respect to commercial operations encompassing sales and merchandising activities.

Conclusions
With firms' emerging tendency to involve their customers in their business processes, increasing interest is devoted to the concept of customer value co-creation. While this concept basically refers to creating mutual value for both the company and the consumer, the use of gamification has addressed it from two main perspectives: one that denotes a merely entertaining experience which increase users' brand loyalty, and another with a further objective of availing their inputs in support of brand value creation. This systematic survey, reporting on a set of empirical studies, has revealed the existence of four major types of brand value co-creation activities that are promoted throughout various game dynamics of disparate levels of impact. Although gamification is showing significant effectiveness in motivating customers to engage in online communities and contribute to brand value creation, very few of these studies investigate the influence of gamification on long-term outcomes, as well as the implications of negative experiences on users' overall satisfaction. Demographic factors should also be studied in order to better understand the attitude and behaviour of active and passive users, possibly with reference to new marketing theories beyond the predominant ones. We also recommend further exploration of the role and impact of gamification in the rapidly growing sharing economy industry which is rarely discussed in the literature. Finally, we shed light on the potential inclusion of advanced gaming technologies that could further energise users' experiences, as well as considering gamifying additional co-creation activities that were not outlined in the literature but are typically related to physical commercial operations and corporate social responsibilities. Funding: This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.