Gamification, an innovative approach to incorporating game elements into non-game contexts in digital marketing, particularly in product sales through Instagram, plays a pivotal role in enhancing users’ purchase decisions. This study, employing a mixed-methods approach (quantitative and qualitative), aimed to identify influential authors, articles, journals, countries, and institutions in the field of gamification and virtual sales on Instagram, as well as to extract key components affecting purchase decisions from 2010 to June 2025. The significance of purchase decisions in this study lies in their ability to assist brands in designing effective marketing strategies, while their necessity is underscored by the optimization of digital interactions and the enhancement of conversion rates on social platforms. The research method was mixed, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. In the quantitative section, a scientometric method was used, utilizing software tools such as Publish or Perish, Excel, VOSviewer, RStudio, and R. In the qualitative section, MAXQDA 2020 was employed for content analysis of the top ten articles. Content analysis was explored in a limited number of articles due to the scarcity of empirical studies in this domain. The results revealed that authors Behl and Jayawardena, with four articles each, were the most influential. The article by Behl et al., with 120 citations, was the most prominent, and content analysis identified ten key components influencing purchase decisions: digital rewards, interactive challenges, sentiment analysis, personalized interactions, content optimization, purchase behavior prediction, ethical data management, digital marketing, customer relationship management, and visual content quality. These findings, with a focus on purchase decisions in sports marketing, provide an innovative framework for designing gamified strategies that enhance digital marketing approaches and strengthen purchase decisions, proving valuable for brands, researchers, and decision-makers in optimizing sales on Instagram.