Why Does Gamification Fail? The Impact Mechanisms of Gamification Design Flaws on Consumers' Continuous Purchase Intention

Although e‐commerce platforms widely implement gamification designs, the potential negative effects on consumers and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. To address this gap, this study employs a two‐stage mixed‐methods approach to uncover the influence mechanisms of gamification design flaws. In Study 1, we collected 24,749 consumer comments describing negative experiences with gamified shopping festivals. By combining BERTopic modeling with a human‐LLM collaboration, we identified seven latent concepts. Further analysis grounded in psychological reactance theory and affective events theory indicated that four gamification design flaws, namely narrative rhythm disruption, game interaction complexity, reward value distortion, and gameplay replaceability, affect consumers' continuous purchase intention through perceived manipulation and frustration. In Study 2, we collected survey responses from 398 consumers who participated in the gamified shopping festivals and used PLS‐SEM to test the proposed hypotheses. This research deepens understanding of the adverse side of gamification, contributes to theoretical perspectives on the mechanisms of gamification design flaws, and provides novel insights for optimizing gamification in e‐commerce platforms.