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This study aims to examine the effect of consumers’ gaming motivations on customer–brand engagement and the potential of this engagement to develop self–brand connections and affective commitment toward luxury brands. Second, it explores if the setup game mechanics and self-congruity with the brand can strengthen the effectiveness of motivation to engage with gamification on customer–brand engagement and self-brand connection.

Data were collected through the survey method using a structured questionnaire. The sample comprised 249 millennial luxury consumers in India. Data analysis was conducted using AMOS 25 and PROCESS Macro for SPSS.

The findings support the mediating role of customer–brand engagement and self–brand connection in the relationship between motivation to engage with gamification and affective commitment. While setup game mechanics and self-congruity with brand positively moderate the effect of motivation to engage with gamification on affective commitment via self–brand connection, a similar effect is not found for the relationship via customer–brand engagement. This study presents important implications for both marketers and academicians.

This study applies the mechanics–dynamics–emotions framework and social exchange theory to explain gamified services as a cocreation process between consumers and luxury brands, fostering customer engagement, connection and commitment with the brands. It highlights the role of setup game mechanics and self-congruity in strengthening the effect of luxury consumers’ gaming motivations on engagement and connection with the brand.

This study aims to investigate the impact of utilitarian, hedonic and social emotional mechanics in gamified digital platforms on the components of value co-creation.

Hypotheses are proposed to test the emotional mechanics of gamification as antecedents of value co-creation in terms of the components of the DART (dialogue, access, risk assessment, transparency) model. The Nike+ gamified digital platform is used as the context for the empirical analysis. The hypothesis testing is performed from the consumer perspective, with data gathered using a questionnaire sent to users of the Nike+ application.

The social emotional mechanics of gamification have a positive impact on the value creation components of dialogue, access, transparency and risk. Utilitarian and hedonic mechanics also exert an impact on the value creation component of access. This study contributes to the value co-creation literature. The findings also reveal the role of customer emotions in embracing gamified platforms in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) ecosystem.

Practitioners and consumers in B2B2C ecosystems can gain insight into how to interact in digital gamified platforms and how to co-create value. This study shows the importance of customers’ emotional mechanics when participating in gamified platforms. The results can help organisations ensure the success of their value co-creation processes.

This paper proposes a combination of approaches that have traditionally been studied in isolation, placing emotions at the heart of the value co-creation paradigm.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

There is a double crisis in modern science and in particular in physics and mechanics. Among others Einstein and Stephane Lupasco, in the 1930s, warned about this crisis. The Quantum Theory cannot be reconciled with the Relativity Theory. Specifically there is a gap (cleavage) between micro – and macro‐physics and mechanics. Parallel or beneath there is also a second crisis derived from a discontinuity (again a cleavage) between classical and modern science, that is between two previous revolutions. A new research programme of a simultaneous equilibrium versus disequilibrium approach, initially applied in economics has now been extended to include natural sciences. It is the question of a new, more comprehensive methodology which is actually a sui generis synthesis between classical and modern heritage. The rigorous application of the new research programme leads to the organisation of an Orientation Table, that is, a methodological map of all possible combinations (systems). The Table shows, without any exaggeration, a few revolutionary results. For instance, with the help of the Table, modern science or the second revolution (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg) does not appear contradictory but rather complementary to classical science or the first revolution (Newton, Lavoisier). The Kuhnian thesis to the contrary is disproved and the second crisis is solved. With the help of the Universal Hypothesis of Duality (the basis of the Orientation Table), matter and energy, at the micro – and macro‐level, appear in a double form (the Principle of Duality): stable (equilibrium) particles and unstable (disequilibrium) waves. The strong interactions from modern physics are associated with the law of gravitation (attraction) or stable equilibrium which governs stable matter and energy. The weak interactions are associated with the law of disgravitation (dispersion or repulsion) including entropy or unstable equilibrium which governs unstable matter and energy. In this way the first crisis is also solved.

The present study aims to synthesize and conceptualize, through a systematic literature review (SLR), the current state of gamification knowledge in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector, providing a roadmap for future research recommendations for service research and practice.

The research is based on a systematic literature review and adopts a systematic quantitative approach to summarize existing evidence on gamification usage in the T&H sector, focusing on relevant service literature on gamification. The authors analyze 36 papers published between 2011 and 2019.

The authors synthesize existing knowledge into five themes describing gamification's role in T&H (Edutainment, Sustainable behavior, Engagement factors, Service provider-generated content and User-generated reviews). Then, a cross-analysis of the five themes reveals the pivotal elements (affordances, behavioral and psychological outcomes, and benefits) generated by gamification mechanics in T&H, simultaneously highlighting potential implications and relevant insights for service literature. The review identifies critical issues affecting gamification research and provides a future research agenda, considering opportunities for T&H and service research.

The study provides the first SLR investigating gamification in T&H. The findings present potential implications and relevant insights for T&H contributing to the construction of a more holistic understanding of gamification adoption in service research.

This research examined the social interactions of online game players based on the proposed motivation model in order to understand the transitions of motivation of online game. The authors also separated samples into four categories to compare the difference of different type of online game players.

This study proposed a motivation model for online game player based on existence–relatedness–growth theory. The authors also analyze the transitions of motivations via first-order and second-order Markov chain switching model to obtain the journey of online to offline socialization.

Teamwork–socialization players preferred to make friends in their online gaming network to socialize. Competition–socialization players were mostly students who played games to compete and socialize and may share experience in online or offline activities. Teamwork–mechanics players purely derived pleasure from gaming and were not motivated by other factors in their gaming activities. Competition–mechanics players may already have friends with other gamers in real life.

More samples can be added to generate more generalizable findings and the proposed motivation model can be extended by other motivations related to online gaming behavior. The authors proposed a motivation model for online to offline socialization and separated online game players into four categories: teamwork–socialization, competition–socialization, teamwork–mechanics and competition–mechanics. The category of teamwork–socialization may contribute to online to offline socialization area. The category of competition–mechanics may add value to the area of traditional offline socialization. The categories of competition–socialization and teamwork–mechanics may help extant literature understand critical stimulus for online gaming behavior.

The authors’ findings can help online gaming industry understand the motivation journey of players through transition. Different types of online games may have various online game player's journey that can assist companies in improving the quality of online games. Online game companies can also offer official community to players for further interaction and experience exchange or the platform for offline activities in the physical environment.

This research proposed a novel motivation model to examine online to offline socializing behavior for online game research. The motivations in model were interconnected via the support of literature. The authors also integrated motivations by Markov chain switching model to obtain the transitions of motivational status. It is also the first attempt to analyze first-order and second-order Markov chain switching model for analysis. The authors’ research examined the interconnected relationships among motivations in addition to the influential factors to online gaming behavior from previous research. The results may contribute to extend the understanding of online to offline socialization in online gaming literature.

This study aims to contribute to the numerical modelling of drop impact on a flip-chip component assembled on printed circuit boards using solder micro-bumps. This contribution is based on the introduction of non-linear fracture mechanics in the numerical approach.

The integration of non-linear fracture mechanics into the numerical approach requires the proposal and validation of several simplifying assumptions. Initially, a dynamic 3D model was simplified to a dynamic 2D model. Subsequently, the dynamic 2D model is replaced with an equivalent static 2D model. The equivalent static 2D model was used to perform calculations considering the non-linear fracture mechanics. A crack was modelled in the critical bump. The J-integral was used as a comparative parameter to study the effects of crack length, crack position and chip thickness on the fracture toughness of the solder bump.

The different simplifying assumptions were validated by comparing the results obtained by the various models. Numerical results showed a high risk of failure at the critical solder bump in a zone close to the intermetallic layer. The obtained results were in agreement with the post-test observations using the “Dye and Pry” methods.

The originality of this study lies in the introduction of non-linear fracture mechanics to model the mechanical response of solder bumps during drop impact. This study led to some interesting conclusions, highlighting the advantage of introducing non-linear fracture mechanics into the numerical simulations of microelectronic components during a drop impact.

This case history describes an information system, using data‐processing techniques, with the following characteristic features: it is designed to serve an interdisciplinary group of workers, whose literature is widely scattered; the users themselves are taking an active part in the development and operation of the system; the large back‐log of past literature is being processed into the system with minimal effort; a variety of tools for both current awareness and retrospective search is being developed, with subject approaches via title words, keywords, facet codes, broad subject codes, and user profile codes; the relative value of these approaches will be evaluated; some of these tools are manually searched, others will be mechanically searched; some are derived from simpler data‐processing equipment, others from the computer; the system is integrated so that all these tools are derived from a single intellectual and clerical input; the system can be flexibly expanded to incorporate more literature, more users, more complex use, and wider subject scope.

Attempts to prove, in this second chapter of the author’s monograph, that with a new research programme, it is possible to build a methodological bridge between economics and all other natural sciences and the scientists should address this challenge. Reviews basic principles that govern nature, including Einstein’s findings along with such luminaries as Copernicus, Newton, Galileo and Jeans. Concludes that the future is safe, as a new generation of scientists is now emerging in the East and the West, and that the new methodology should provide enough space for new roads, ideas and interpretations, which may occur in the future. Closes by saying a new spirit should be initiated in economics and transplanted into natural sciences.

This paper gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied to the analysis of ceramics and glass materials. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations on the subject that were published between 1977‐1998. The following topics are included: ceramics – material and mechanical properties in general, ceramic coatings and joining problems, ceramic composites, ferrites, piezoceramics, ceramic tools and machining, material processing simulations, fracture mechanics and damage, applications of ceramic/composites in engineering; glass – material and mechanical properties in general, glass fiber composites, material processing simulations, fracture mechanics and damage, and applications of glasses in engineering.