Gamification: A New Era of Influence
Influencing customers to increase their purchases during their shopping, or to make sure they’d come back to the store in a higher tempo, or to encourage them to tell more people about the experience they had inside the retail. The three goals are crucial for any business in order thrive. That’s why many psychological techniques are employed so to influence people to engage more with the product and its provider and one of this methods it was gamification.
Mainly there are two routes to influence customers, first one is to present them appealing offers like discounts, vouchers, loyalty programs,…etc. which everyone already do. The second one is to set a challenge to act as an access to these offers. This kind of challenge meets many of the basic psychological needs of any human beings, as such challenge encompasses the desire for progress, achievement, self-esteem, discovery, success.
“Games and gamification always proved to be an extraordinary mean to ignite and engage people.”
In the last two decades, a new term has been introduced called gamification, which is harnessing game elements in a non-game context like in business, marketing, teaching,…etc. Games always proved to be an extraordinary mean to ignite and engage people, because games are a source of challenge; they trigger those psychological needs so to be fulfilled by accepting the challenge and delving into the game.
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So, what if gamification gets merged with psychological tactics that enhance the quality of the game, and both are manifested in a modern technological means, which finally lead to the most amazing experience to customers that leads to more purchases, more loyalty, and more buzz.
Imagine when a store offers a regular 20% discount at the detergent section, so for sure they get spike in sales. Compare this regular offer to another quite similar one where the only difference is by setting up a small and nice interactive kiosk where it has a big sign above shows “Win the challenge and get a discount coupon.” The customer accesses the game by placing his thumb on a fingerprint scanner to ensure the same customer can’t play the same game twice. Then the game starts in its simplest form, like by offering few questions with multiple answers, then a small thermal printer pops out a discount coupon with a varying percentage depending on how many correct answers the customer could score.
Psychology can play a very crucial role in making this game more intriguing to customers, for example adding scarcity effect by setting up a sixty second countdown timer that let the gamer feel the urgency to focus and play fast. In addition, adding the element of visualizing the accumulated results by adding up each point the gamer gain. Also, adding priming effect by choosing a kind of questions that can anchor the customer’s mind to a certain price or a product so it become memorable to the customer so it increase the intentions of buying it in his/her future visits.
“Win the challenge and get a discount coupon!”
Finally, adding the element of technology consisting of flat touchscreen, thermal printer, fingerprint scanner, kiosk casing. All these stuff are getting cheaper and more affordable to many businesses.
The intersection between gamification, psychology, and technology could lead to a new era of influence and consumer psychology in different business arenas, yet merging the three elements efficiently should be done very carefully, as the real challenge to make an amazing experience to customers is to create challenge that people find themselves intrinsically motivated to go through, by ornamenting the game with psychological hacks that cause pupils dilation, higher rate of breath and heartbeat, just then the game succeed to grant success to the entire business.
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