Enhancing brand love, customer engagement, brand experience, and repurchase intention: Focusing on the role of gamification in mobile apps

Advances in and increased access to mobile technology have prompted businesses to embrace gamified applications, particularly to enhance customer engagement. Thus, it is important to highlight not only the antecedents and consequences of customer engagement but also the critical role of gamification. This study aims to examine the causal relationships among brand identification, self-expressiveness, brand love, gamification, customer engagement, brand experience, and repurchase intention in the context of Nike Run Club, a gamified running app available at the Apple and Google Play stores. It also explores the mediating effect of consumer engagement on the association that brand love and gamification have with brand experience and repurchase intention. Additionally, it analyzes the moderating effects of gamification on the relationship between brand love and customer engagement. The hypotheses are empirically tested by analyzing data collected from 526 respondents on a Nike Run Club app. Results confirm that both brand identification and self-expressiveness significantly and positively influence brand love, which in turn significantly and positively affects customer engagement and, subsequently, brand experience and repurchase intention. Further, this study demonstrates that customer engagement acts as a mediator to improve brand experience and to motivate the customer to repurchase the brand. In addition to showing the impact of gamification on brand love, brand experience, and repurchase intention, this study reveals the moderating effect of gamification on the relationship between brand love and customer engagement. These findings offer deeper insights into brand identification, self-expressiveness, and gamification as significant influencing factors, which can be helpful to brand managers in enhancing brand love and customer engagement. Additionally, this study demonstrates that gamification is the most effective approach to increasing brand love, strengthening customer engagement, and improving brand experiences and repurchase intention.