The Effects of Game Elements on Consumer Participation Behavior: Review and Future Prospects

As the new marketing tools, game elements have been applied by more and more enterprises to marketing prac-tice, aiming at improving consumer participation. In view of this, based on a review and analysis of relevant literatures at home and abroad, the research classifies game elements into three categories, which are the game design objects, the game design mechanism and the game design principles. The relationships between concepts, such as game elements, game, gamification and gamified marketing are defined from the perspectives of instrumental outcomes and experiential outcomes. On this basis, through the discussion of the theoretical basis behind, it is found that the three types of game elements would influence consumers’cogni-tions, emotions and intrinsic motivations, thereby improve consumer participation behavior. Product types and consumer charac-teristics will also adjust the relationships between game elements and consumer participation behavior. At the last part, the paper puts forward some directions of future research.