Tag: gamification

Key Trends in Marketing Gamification

Posted on

From entertaining Super Bowl commercials to wildly viral video campaigns, marketing has always had a flair for the playful. It is no surprise then that the concept of gamification is readily integrated into many aspects of marketing. Well-known examples include Starbucks’ creative use of gamification in its reward program and McDonald’s adaptation of the Monopoly Game. In this article, I’d like to outline several key trends I observe in the application of gamification in marketing.

Gamification and Branding

Good gamification and good branding share one thing in common: a good story. In a world of social media and user-generated content, a brand has to shift from hard sell to telling good stories about the brand to attract consumers. The new generations of consumers appreciate a brand that is authentic and relatable. Gamification will play an important role in brand storytelling by integrating bits and pieces of brand stories into gamified experiences. It can bring the brand story alive and let the fun experiences translate into memorable brand moments for users. Coca-Cola’s huggable vending machine is a good example of such experiences.

Using Gamification to Increase Customer Engagement

Games are engaging, and customer engagement is a valuable asset in today’s marketing. One brand adept at leveraging board game concepts is Starbucks. The Starbucks Hopscotch game that ran this spring challenged users to make specific purchases (e.g., buying lunch, mobile ordering) in order to hopscotch their way to 400 bonus stars. Compared to an old boring promotion, gamification keeps users on their toes and offers them the gratification of winning challenges and rewards. The result? An audience who won’t easily get comfortable or bored with a brand and who will want to be part of the exciting experiences that the brand has to offer.

Continue reading “Key Trends in Marketing Gamification”

Research Focus: Gamify Your Loyalty Program

Posted on

Author’s note: With this post, I am restarting a previous tradition on my blog to report from time to time the findings from a single research paper. Now named “Research Focus”, these slightly shorter posts will summarize each research paper in accessible and practically relevant lingo. The focus is on what the research findings mean to practice. The research papers featured will be chosen from recently published or soon-to-be-published work as well as significant working papers that I consider to be highly relevant to loyalty marketing practice. The goal is to facilitate the dissemination of scientific research, build practice knowledge, and speed up the scientific discovery to practice cycle time. I hope you will enjoy the feature!

Loyalty program is everywhere, yet engaging consumers in a loyalty program remains elusive to businesses. Look at your own wallet or key ring, and you are likely to see at least a few loyalty cards that you no longer use. You are not alone. The 2017 Colloquy Loyalty Census reports that as many as 54% of loyalty program memberships in the US are inactive. A more recent loyalty program engagement survey of 1000+ consumers by CodeBroker shows that 65% of those surveyed are engaged with less than half of their loyalty programs.

The loyalty program (dis)engagement problem has various possible solutions. One solution is gamification, that is, introducing gaming into a loyalty program. Examples of this approach abound in practice, offered by familiar brands such as Victorial’s Secret, Domino’s Pizza, and Starbucks (see the picture at the beginning of this post for a screenshot of the currently running Starbucks Bonus Star Hopscotch game). In today’s Research Focus paper, to be published in Journal of Business Research, Professor Jiyoung Hwang and her colleague studied when and how gamification helps in a loyalty program context. Continue reading “Research Focus: Gamify Your Loyalty Program”