Game ON : Customer Gamification Program as Key to Improve Trust and Customer Satisfaction

Abstract

This research aims to examine the impact of a gamification program on customer trust, with customer satisfaction serving as a mediating variable, while also assessing the effects of antecedent factors including performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and social influence. A quantitative approach was employed by distributing questionnaires to Indomaret customers who actively use the Poinku application. Data were analyzed using the Partial Least Square–Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique to evaluate both direct and indirect relationships among the research variables. The findings reveal that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions significantly and positively influence the Customer Gamification Program, whereas social influence shows no significant effect. Moreover, the gamification program was found to have a significant effect on customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction strongly influences customer trust. This finding confirms that the success of Indomaret's gamification program in building customer trust is not direct, but rather achieved through first increasing customer satisfaction. Therefore, companies need to continue developing gamification innovations that focus on benefits, ease of use, and facility support in order to create sustainable satisfaction and ultimately strengthen customer trust.