Gamification in retail: reward customers and sell more

What is gamification in retail?

Gamification in retail is a way of rewarding customers (both online and in person) for taking part in “games” with discounts, promotions, free merchandise or other prizes. Although setting up and running a game takes time and effort, the benefits — such as increasing customer traffic, strengthening engagement and boosting sales — can easily outweigh the cost.

Why is gamification in retail important?

Making sure your retail business stays relevant and keeps pace with the competition means it is important to experiment with new, on-trend sales and marketing strategies. Gamification in retail is one of them.

So here are 8 examples of gamification in retail

1. Sephora

Sephora’s “Swipe it. Shop it”. The Shop it campaign used retail gamification to add some fun to the usually overwhelming task of choosing between hundreds of beauty products.

Drawing on the familiar, easy-to-use experience of the Tinder dating app, Sephora customers could swipe left or right depending on whether or not they liked a specific look.

This gamification example helped Sephora create an experience of exploring an endless catalogue of products. It also helped the brand attract a millennial audience.

2. Victoria’s Secret VS and PINK Collective

It is a rewards programme and a community for Victoria’s Secret and PINK customers.

It is a loyalty programme where shoppers of the main Victoria’s Secret brand and the PINK brand can experience gamification in retail by earning points and rewards, receiving a birthday gift and choosing their own perk once a year.

Victoria’s Secret cardholders also get special benefits such as earning rewards faster, triple points on bra purchases and an anniversary gift just for being a cardholder. On top of all that, when you join the Victoria’s Secret or PINK app, you also get access to the Victoria’s Secret online community.

3. Nike

Tapping into the competitive nature of its target audience, the Nike App and its sister apps — Nike Training Club, Nike Run Club and SNKRS — bring together runners, coaches and athletes alike; in fact, more than 300 million of them.

The digital programme lets users post their best times, track their progress and challenge friends and family to improve their fitness and reach their goals. And the rewards Nike offers? How about early access to products and events, free shipping, personalised workouts and more?

Nike’s apps are a place for its enthusiastic community to come together and interact with the brand, and they also drive sales and engagement for the fitness brand. Plus members sign up and give the company invaluable customer information, including the activities they use its products for: the best kind of information for further developing the app and the product line.

4. Pepsi

In 2020, Pepsi launched a special AR-powered promotional campaign with four of the best international footballers: Lionel Messi, Paul Pogba, Mo Salah and Raheem Sterling.

The promotion included limited-edition Pepsi cans with scannable QR codes that loaded AR versions of the players onto users’ phones. Users could then take part in a virtual game with social sharing features through Instagram.

The AR game was part of the company’s “Pepsi, For the Love of It” campaign, a multichannel digital experience designed to increase customer engagement and drive brand awareness.

5. Gucci

Like many other luxury fashion brands, Gucci has taken an interest in NFTs and the emerging field of “digital fashion”. So far, Gucci has released digital avatar garments and items for Roblox, Pokémon Go and Zepeto, a virtual world where users can create their own unique avatar and chat with friends.

Gucci has also created the Gucci Sneaker Garage app, which lets users customise their own digital Gucci sneakers. Gamification is helping Gucci reach a completely new market made up mainly of younger consumers and online gamers. Many other luxury fashion brands, such as Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga, are also embracing Gucci’s forward-looking vision in the digital world.

6. Casper

In 2019, mattress company Casper placed a series of adverts inside New York subway trains. Each advert contained a riddle, a series of images that spelled out a word, with no additional context.

Casper added the riddles and their solutions to its website and even turned them into a downloadable riddle colouring book.

7. Starbucks

Starbucks pioneered many of the omnichannel promotional strategies used by other big brands. Starbucks Rewards accounts for between 40 and 50% of the brand’s total revenue, making it one of the most valuable loyalty programmes in the world.

At first, customers received a rewards card they could use to collect points on purchases and eventually redeem them for discounts. Now Starbucks Rewards has become a sophisticated, multi-purpose app with all kinds of useful features for Starbucks regulars.

Starbucks’ loyalty programme certainly owes part of its success to the smart use of gamification. The collectible stars earned with every purchase can be saved and redeemed for discounts, free menu items and other rewards.

The Starbucks Rewards app personalises its promotions for each customer using the purchase data and preferences it collects. The app also sets challenges for users to complete, such as giving a free drink to users who buy a certain amount of a specific product in a week. It also has time-limited offers, such as double stars on certain days, to encourage users even more.

8. Hyundai

In 2013, South Korean carmaker Hyundai launched an ingenious gamification campaign in partnership with AMC’s hit TV series “The Walking Dead”. Hyundai created an app that let users customise Hyundai cars with almost 300 different zombie-killing modifications. Hyundai Chop Shop was a big hit and was downloaded millions of times. Users who interacted with the app daily and answered trivia questions were rewarded with points they could use to unlock new items, which encouraged repeat engagement.

Hyundai Chop Shop built on an earlier product placement deal with AMC in which the show’s characters used a lime green Hyundai Tucson as their main means of transport in a zombie-infested Georgia.

This article is a machine translation of the Spanish original.

• Gamification
• Retail
• Marketing