The Influence of Gamification Mechanics on Online Group-buying Participation

With the surge of social commerce, an increasing number of online group-buying platforms have been established. Gamification is a popular mechanism adopted by such online group-buying platforms to effectively foster consumers’ participation. However, there is a dearth of gamification literature that examines the effectiveness of gamification mechanics in the context of online groupbuying. This study establishes a model relating two prominent gamification mechanics (i.e., challenge affordance and collaboration affordance) with consumers’ participation in online group-buying platforms, which are mediated by relatedness and playfulness. An online survey with 227 samples is conducted on a Chinese group-buying website named Pinduoduo. Using the partial-least-squares structural-equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) method, results indicate that collaboration affordance positively affects relatedness and playfulness which, in turn, motivate consumers to participate. Challenge affordance positively influences playfulness, but not relatedness. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are also discussed.

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