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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Commun.

Sec. Advertising and Marketing Communication

Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1608764

How gamification affects switching behaviors in the mobile-commerce platform: The role of customer engagement and switching cost

Provisionally accepted
  • School of Business, Binus University, Jakarta, Indonesia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This study examines the relationship between gamification in m-commerce and customer switching behavior, with customer engagement as a mediator and switching costs as a moderator. Data was collected using a cross-sectional approach involving 356 respondents in Indonesia. PLS-SEM analysis with moderator variables was applied to test the model and hypothesis. The findings indicate that gamification positively influences customer engagement and negatively affects switching behavior. Additionally, customer engagement has been confirmed to be significantly related to switching behavior and a significant mediator between gamification and switching behavior. Switching costs further moderate the negative relationship between customer engagement and switching behavior. These results provide important implications for business practices and the development of gamification-based customer retention strategies.

Keywords: Gamification, m-commerce, Switching behavior, customer engagement, switching costs

Received: 09 Apr 2025; Accepted: 02 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Yuliawan, Sanny, Saroso and Candra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Eko Yuliawan, School of Business, Binus University, Jakarta, Indonesia

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