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The increasing success of e-commerce causes a steadily rising number of returns. Consumer returns are both an economical and an ecological problem. Therefore, it is essential to influence consumer behavior and prevent returns before they occur. One potential approach to influence behavior is gamification. This study investigates the effect of gamification on consumer return behavior, drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and the Technology Acceptance Model (Venkatesh & Davis, 1996). During the online experiment with 456 participants, we observed the participants' return attitude, perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, return intention, perceived usefulness, and perceived enjoyment. Participants were introduced to a fictitious online shopping community "VIP Club", and then randomly assigned to one of three different settings: (1) no gamification, (2) gamification with an individual incentive, and (3) gamification with a social incentive. The results suggest that gamification approaches can make a valuable contribution to preventive returns management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital signages are the most diffused in-;store technologies with their effects on perceived store atmospherics and behavioral outcomes relying heavily on their visual design and context. To further inform and understand the effects of visual design, this research investigates the effect of digital signage designs from the lens of Fuzzy-Trace Theory which differentiates between a verbatim and gist-based processing of (visual) information. The designs were embedded within a store environment and without this context to validate the design's effect in context. The results of our study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy show activated brain areas in the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) accompanied by a lateral PFC deactivation, which indicates cognitive relief and increased emotional processing for gist-based designs. In store context, the cognitive relief is no longer found, yet the emotional attribution was still found. These results provide several theoretical and practical implications for the visual design of digital signages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]