Game On: Enhancing Customer Engagement Through Influencers’ Gamified Messages

Effective customer engagement with tourism brands is crucial for influencer marketing and can be significantly enhanced through creative and innovative message strategies that capture customer attention. This paper examines the impact of gamified messages—a novel message modality—on customer engagement with tourism brands. The results of the four studies herein show that gamified messages lead to higher customer engagement with tourism brands than traditional text messages, with flow experience identified as the underlying mechanism explaining this effect. Customer engagement, in turn, leads to higher behavioral intentions toward the tourism brand and intentions to follow the influencer. Gamified messages, when employed by specialist influencers and oriented to adventure, are also shown to increase customer engagement with tourism brands. The findings offer insights for tourism brands seeking to enhance customer engagement through influencer marketing.