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India's booming and fast-growing young population are second only to China in being one of the world's heaviest consumers of internet services. It is estimated that by 2025 India would have 900 million active internet users (ETtech, 2021). Similarly, e-tailing is rising in popularity in India and has a big potential for growth in the worldwide market (Dorai et al., 2021). The process through which online retail firms sell things by taking orders online and fulfilling them both online and offline is known as e-tailing (Kim et al., 2009). In India, female internet users accounted for 48 percent of active internet users, while only 28 percent of the total users account for those who shop online regularly (Bhattacharjee, 2021). This implies that there are still a large number of active female internet users that are yet to regularly engage in e-tailing. This could be due to factors like trust, task awareness, perceptions of usefulness, and ease of the shopping experience on e-tailing platforms (Raman, 2014). Women place the most importance on the dimension of e-trust and task awareness when it comes to e-tailing platforms (Sebastianelli et al., 2008). To better engage online shoppers, e-tailing platforms seek to come up with unique ways to build user trust and dependability towards the platform, but only a few studies explain the role of e-trust in e-tailing (Das, 2016).
Gamification has well-specified as the application of game mechanics to non-game situations (Deterding et al., 2011). The purpose of gamification is to provide the target individuals or groups with specific motivational affordances to achieve specific behavioral outcomes (Jung et al., 2010; Weiser et al., 2015; Zhang, 2008). Nearly 70% of worldwide organizations planned to embrace gamification for promotion and customer engagement in the near future (Fitz-Walter, 2013). In the context of technology-enabled services, the use of game mechanics is viewed as a tool by service providers to make the service more engaging for the users (Hamari & Koivisto, 2015). By implementing game mechanics into information systems, designers of such systems seek to build trust, thereby resulting in certain behavioral and usage intentions regarding the platform (Hunicke et al., 2004). Game mechanics such as points and leaderboards have been commonly used in gamified applications and contexts (Deterding & Walz, 2014), but depending only on those game mechanics might not be enough to render gamification effectiveness (Chorney, 2012). However, with respect to virtual currency as a game mechanic (Aziz et al., 2017), there is a dearth of studies that look into the effectiveness of the applications of virtual currency as a game mechanic in various contexts.
Virtual currency is a type of digital currency but may indeed not have all of the characteristics of actual money (Dibrova, 2016). Virtual currency in the gamification context is the non-standard virtual money utilized while enjoying the game and the money point system with some economic value. Despite concerns about legitimacy and viability, the proportion of people using virtual currencies increases globally (Shin, 2008). According to the latest estimates, India is estimated to contribute roughly ten percent of the global virtual currency market. One of India's widely used e-tailing web applications for online shopping is Flipkart (Dorai et al., 2021) that has got virtual currency. Members of Flipkart platforms can gain achievements due to activities and virtual currency by completing specific tasks like purchasing (Aydin, 2015). The literature also points to the need for focused empirical studies with regards to specific game mechanics and their influence in creating behavioral and engagement outcomes among intended user groups (Xi & Hamari, 2020).