In July 2016, the 23rd EIRASS conference on Recent Advances in Retailing and Consumer Services Sciences was held in Edinburgh, Scotland. During this event Wafa Hammedi (University of Namur, Belgium), Thomas Leclercq (Louvain School of Management, Belgium) and Allard van Riel (Nijmegen School of Management, the Netherlands) received the Elsevier Prize for the Most Innovative Paper.
Their work, entitled «The use of gamification mechanics to increase user and employee engagement in participative healthcare services: A study of two cases», applies a combination of multiple qualitative methods in hospitals and medical centers to investigate how gamification generates patient and employee engagement through more playful experiences. This research highlights several positive outcomes of using these gamified service processes. However, to fully enjoy the benefits of gamified services, users are often expected to acquire new skills. The absence of these skills (or difficulties in acquiring them) may delay or negatively moderate the positive effects of gamification on engagement, especially in the case of progressively decreasing capabilities. For instance, in the case of aging users, or users with degenerative diseases, gamification may actually stress the presence of these physical or mental disabilities. The authors propose a research agenda to stimulate further research into gamified services.
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