No pain, no gain! The uncertainty-to-win effect on customer experience quality through gamified interaction

Offering customers a high-quality experience has become critical for companies. Scholars have therefore emphasized the opportunity to use gamification. However, despite the increasing popularity of such an approach, prior studies report mixed results. This research aims to reconcile these findings by identifying under which conditions gamification leads to a better experience. Drawing on uncertainty-resolution theory, we examine how uncertainty-to-win affects customer experience quality. The results from six studies, combining a field study and experiments, demonstrate the benefits of uncertainty-to-win for customer experience quality. We find that the uncertainty-to-win effect persists even after people are informed of a win/lose decision. Moreover, we highlight that losing the contest stresses the uncertainty-to-win effect, and consequently counter the harmful effect of loss. Conversely, we suggest that reward value mitigates the positive impact of uncertainty-to-win by focusing customers’ attention on a prize instead of on their experience. Our findings move the literature forward by underscoring how uncertainty-to-win is a condition that explains gamification’s ability to deliver a high-quality experience.