Game On with Consumer Competition

Engage shoppers with game formats. It’s called “gamification.” But be sure the rules of the game favor your store profitability.
     Customers have always loved to play games used as sales promotions. Scratch-off discounts. Sweepstakes. “Design our new logo” or “Name our new service” or “Tell us in 25 words or less why you shop at our store.”
     In the early days, before it was called gamification, retailers and manufacturers concluded that there needed to be real, tangible prizes for maximum participant involvement, although the value of the prizes often could be quite modest. People got involved for the joy of the contest.
     More recently, marketers are finding that no extrinsic reward at all is needed if the excitement of the game is sufficient. This love of the game blossomed with the popularity of desktop computers and then the sorts of mobile and desktop devices shoppers use for ecommerce. The word “gaming” morphed from serving as a euphemism for “gambling” into a shorthand for “playing games on a computerized gadget.” According to AllThingsD, over one billion copies of Angry Birds have been downloaded.
     The ethos of social networking channels adds to the gamification impetus: The objective is to add as many Followers and accumulate as many Likes as you can, regardless of the quality of the tally.
     I could argue that the more traffic you have, regardless of quality, the greater the probability of profitability. Thus a gamification suggestion from University of Pennsylvania researchers is worth considering: Keep up the competition. The payoff is that your game participants will exert a greater effort.
     It was a half century ago that Avis Rent A Car System unveiled a series of ads which the trade journal Advertising Age later called one of the top ten campaigns of the 20th century. The theme of the ads: “We’re number 2 in rent a cars behind Hertz, so we try harder.”
     The Pennsylvania researchers applied their theory to an analysis of data from 60,000 basketball games, including 18,000 National Basketball Association games. They found that teams which were behind by one point at halftime were more likely to end up winning the game than were teams ahead by one point at halftime.
     Being slightly in back of the leader boosts motivation, and thereby sharpens performance. Tell game participants the point levels of one or two others who are slightly ahead of them in the tally.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

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Position Your Team a Little Bit Behind 
Guard Your Promotions Against Being Gamed