BA Abschlussvortrag, Marvin Ahmadi-Moghaddam, Ort: Online, Datum: 14.09.2021, Zeit: 11:30 Uhr

This bachelor thesis investigates the potential of gamification in the Mercedes-Benz online car configurator by developing a concept, implementing a prototype of it and performing a user study on it. The use of several game elements (progress indicators, points, badges, leaderboards, levels, storytelling, quests, coins and hints) is discussed and related to some underlying psychological theories (goal-setting theory, operant conditioning and self-determination theory). The prototype of the concept is integrated into the existing microservice architecture of the Mercedes-Benz car configurator by using Kotlin and the Spring framework and the frontend application is extended, using the Angular framework and typescript. The user study of n = 30 participants is conducted through a survey, interviews and live observations, resulting in a thorough feedback for evaluation. The conducted results indicate a gain of motivation through badges and the employed gamification concept helped to increase the overview over the configuration process. It was possible to increase the perception of customer values through points but no significant evidence was found that also brand values could be stressed within the configuration process. The data provided hints that gamification can also lead to a distraction from the actual configuration task and that user may feel forced to deviate from their individual wishes. Finally, a correlation between the user’s satisfaction of the gamified prototype and their configured vehicle was determined which indicates potential benefits of gamification in online car configurators.