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Today, marketing has evolved due to the emergence of new electronic technologies and has shifted to e-marketing. Meanwhile, the gamification and gamified systems is an up-to-date research topic that has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years. As one of the main goals of marketing is to increase customer engagement and loyalty by persuading and motivating them to participate, the gamification has a great potential for e-marketing. Although much research has been done on the gamification subject in e-marketing, there has not yet been a comprehensive review of these studies. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific and practical research on gamification applied to e-marketing using the systematic mapping study methodology.

Because considerable research has been devoted to gamification since 2011, and the number of papers published in this area has grown steadily from 2011, the paper reviews the publications over the period 2011-2018. The research method includes developing research questions, designing the research process and filtering the findings based on the specified criteria.

The findings of this study show the main applications of gamification in e-marketing, the technologies used and the proven benefits of applying this technique in e-marketing. It also provides a classification of the studies in this area.

This paper helps other researchers to understand the main areas of research in gamification within the marketing discipline and enables them to find the fields needed for future studies.

The proposed classification can give a comprehensive overview of the scientific and practical actions taken on gamification applied to e-marketing for academics and practitioners. It also enables the readers to find main areas of research and motivates them to apply gamification in e-marketing.