Yang Yang's research while affiliated with Swansea University and other places

The development of multiple applications with features of games has brought about a new trend – gamification. Gamification has become a fast-emerging practice in the business world, with a growing number of organizations adopting gaming techniques and game-style rewards in order to increase customer engagement. Despite this growing trend and the potential role played by gamification, the marketing literature lacks models that explain the use of gamification in the marketing context, customers' perceptions of gamification and its effects on their attitudes towards the brand. This study addresses this omission by adopting the TAM framework in a gamification context. Similar to TAM, gamification finds its roots in the technology and information systems literature. Drawing on TAM, this study presents a model that examines the effects of gamification on customers' intention to engage in the gamification process and their attitudes toward the brand. Using a quantitative methodology, the results provide empirical support for perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment as predictors to intention of engagement and brand attitude. However, perceived ease of use was surprisingly found not to be significantly related to people's intention of engagement with the gamification process and their brand attitude. In addition, perceived social influence was found not to be related to people's intention of engagement, but was related to their brand attitude. The findings of this research have theory and practical implications.