Purchase through mobile apps (m-commerce) is on the rise. While this phenomenon is affecting any consumers cohort, millennials represent the lion’s share among m-commerce users. Businesses are anyway struggling to better obtain the attention of a younger consumers. Indeed, the more competitors start to use m-commerce, the more differentiating communication strategies get difficult. To continue to attract the consideration from younger consumers, marketers are therefore adopting gamification as a strategic marketing lever. Thus, gamified advertisings -which are advertising characterized by high interactivity and game-like features- are becoming a trending topic in marketing literature. Building on Use and Gratification Theory (UGT) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the research wishes to explore how consumers’ experience deriving from Gamified Advertising (GAMEX) could contribute to the creation of consumers’ benefits and their intention to purchase trough a mobile app. How gamification experience could correspondingly shape the attitude toward advertising has also been considered. To achieve the aim of the research, a structural model was tested trough data collected from 315 millennials living in the UK. Results show how a relationship between gamification induced experiences could foster in-app purchases. Anyway, such a connection is mediated by perceived consumer-benefits, their attitude toward advertising, and perceived advertising effectiveness. Gamified advertising thus can be effective if it could foster social, personal, hedonic and cognitive benefits, and whether gamification is perceived coherent with the advertised product/brand pair.

Purpose: Under the sunlight of social commerce, few concepts have blossomed like value co-creation. But when blurred strategies are implemented, the opportunity to wilt a brand is high. To avoid the miscues and the controversies, an ascendant step is to engage consumers with social commerce sites. The purpose of this paper is to propose three antecedents to engage consumers with social commerce sites, namely, social support, social commerce value and social commerce information sharing, and the effect of brand engagement on the intention of brand co-creation.Design/methodology/approach: This study used survey data from 234 Iranians with experience using social commerce sites. Variance-based structural equation modeling using the partial least squares path modeling approach was adopted to analyze the structural model.Findings: The authors found that social support, social commerce value and social commerce information sharing positively foster brand engagement. The study also revealed that brand engagement is a significant predictor of brand co-creation intention.Originality/value: The study is the first study that considers and explains brand engagement from social support theory, social commerce value theory and social commerce information exchange. Also, the study shows how consumers can be an integral part of a brand. Unlike other studies which were done in industrialized countries, this study was employed in Iran.

Without question, 2020 was an unprecedented period for all businesses and consumers in the world, especially for social commerce businesses. Growing online shopping during the pandemic has proliferated the appetite of social commerce websites. Drawing on the situational influences’ theory and social support theory, the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of situational influences during the COVID-19 pandemic on online purchase intention across the big five personality traits. The data were collected via online survey. The sample consisted of 349 social commerce website users in the UK. The model was tested using Partial Least Squares-Structured Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The results showed the different cohorts of buying intention on social commerce websites. Social support does not impact online purchase intention, while other situational factors do. Moreover, the model varied across the big five personality traits. The study substantially contributes to social commerce by investigating the social support and situational influences across different types of personality traits on online purchase intention during the pandemic.

Recently many banks around the world are adopting chatbots to communicate with their customers. However, the success of banking chatbots relay on customer adoption of this new technology. Although chatbots use in the banking sector is expanding globally, the Arabic world is still behind in using the technology, and chatbot applications in the Arab world are still immature. One reason behind this lag is the complexity of the Arabic language. This study comes to bridge the gap in the literature regarding what technology aspects affect customer adoption of bank chatbots in the Arabic world, and which type of Arabic language is the most effective in communicating with Arabic language speakers. UTAUT2 was used to figure what factors afect customer adoption. The data for this study was collected from two separate groups, with a total of 429 participants. Results showed that there is a significant difference between the model testing Arabic Fusha and Dialect Fusha. Results showed that Effort expectancy influences adoption only when dialect Arabic is used. Performance expectancy was also found to have no effect on the adoption of bank chatbot in both groups.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the latest breakthroughs in social commerce by examining the characteristics of consumers' social self-identity factors in the food and beverage sector. The objective is to examine how social self-identities factors contribute to exchanging information on social commerce platforms for food and beverage products.Design/methodology/approach: This study employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the measurement and structural model. A total of 238 food and beverage website and apps users were questioned using a structural survey.Findings: Contrary to expectations, one self-inner driver does not influence consumers' intentions to exchange social commerce information, while up-to-date information, validation and like-minded discussion have a strong impact on the social commerce exchange model.Originality/value: The findings of this research offer new insights into the brand's abilities to induce social commerce. The findings also assist marketing managers in better managing brand content on these websites.