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Despite the increasing use of gamification mechanics to engage customers in firms' activities, the risks related to such use remain unclear. To address this knowledge gap, this research examines the impacts of losing a challenge, which is a phenomenon experienced by the majority of customers involved in gamified settings but underexplored in literature. We investigate the context of co-creation communities by combining two widely used gamification mechanics, competition and cooperation. Results from three laboratory experiments and one field experiment show that win/lose decisions weaken the benefits of gamification and, in the case of losing a competition, have negative impacts on customer experience and engagement. They also demonstrate that customers' levels of prior engagement with the community moderate the negative impacts of losing a competition. Supported by equity theory, this research questions the effectiveness of gamification mechanics, identifies their limits, and provides guidelines on how to properly implement them.

The emergence of smart technologies is increasingly catching the attention of researchers and practitioners, especially in retailing contexts. However, empirical studies investigating the impact of technologies' design on customers' shopping experience remain limited. In response to this gap, this research analyzes the impact of gamification mechanics, a widely used tool to design smart technologies, on customers' experience, emotions and the resulting behavioral intentions. Therefore, we first examine the impact of two gamification mechanics, challenge and fantasy, on customer experience and patronage intentions. Then, we specifically study the case of the Smartstore, a smart innovative technology used to personalize items in retailing contexts and combining these two gamification mechanics in comparison with a classical interface without any gamification mechanics. Based on those two experimental studies, our findings confirm that personalizing a product through a gamified interfacemight have a positive impact in termsof experience during the process but also on patronage intentions. Hence this research also shows that solely adding gamification mechanics such as challenge and fantasy in a smart interface is not enough to significantly enhance the quality of the perceived experience.