Gamification marketing (2)

The fusion of psychology and technology

Marketing is gainful if it›s gameful! Market your services and service your marketing!

Gamification refers to the application of game mechanics into other things that are traditionally non-game related, with the broader goal of increasing user engagement.

Gamification marketing is a broader aspect of digital marketing. It is the process of attracting, identifying and retaining customers through game design techniques.

The feelings and emotions that gamification evokes can all be categorised under one of David McClelland’s human motivators – need for achievement. As a result, there are essentially three pillars of gamification, which illustrate how and why gamification is able to increase participation, loyalty and engagement. I have summarised the three pillars as acronyms which are ‘PLAY,’ ‘FLOW’ and ‘ViBe.’ Essentially, the first word of the acronyms each represents the three pillars, that is, Participation, Fun and Value. Simply put, gamification must be fun so as to motivate user’s participation, thereby delivering its intended value via user engagement with the subject matter. Since gamification is often used in service design, its application is often well pronounced in service marketing and within the service industries such as airline industry for destination marketing to customers, healthcare sector, to gamify healthcare benefits for the performance of health-care related habits or behaviours, also in the education domain – to simplify complex knowledge by adding game elements, etc.

Below is my creative model to illustrate the three pillars of gamification and other variables:

PLAY (UX)            FLOW (GX)          ViBe

Participation       Fun        Value-in-Behaviour

Loyalty  Learning

Achievement     Originality

Yearning              Work

GX – Gameful experience

UX – User experience

GX + UX = ViBe

Value-in-behaviour is a proxy for performance of behaviour via customer brand engagement. For instance, well gamified brand marketing can elicit certain behaviours in consumers with respect to perceived value towards products as well as repeat purchase. ViBe is consumer perceived value towards the performance of behaviour. Value can be defined “as the regard that something is held to deserve, the importance, worth or usefulness of something” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2013). Perceived consumer value and its influence on consumer behaviour has attracted significant attention by scholars and marketing practitioners (Ravald and Grönroos, 1996, Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004, Anderson et al., 2006, Sánchez-Fernández and Iniesta-Bonillo, 2007, Gallarza et al., 2011, Vargo and Lusch, 2013). If someone, after engaging with a gamified system designed to promote energy efficiency behaviours such as using energy-efficient appliances or switching off electrical appliances when not in use, begins to inculcate such habits, the perceived value in such behaviours has elicited performance of behaviour in the real sense of it. Gamification is a strategic and useful behavioural manipulation tool!

Gamification is used to drive participation, loyalty and most importantly, engagement. Generally speaking, the rewards of gamification can be either extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic rewards refer to actual prizes, such as ranks, items and badges, whereas intrinsic rewards refer to the internal feeling of reward when you do something just for the sake of doing it. Gamification marketing leverages both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to foster customer brand engagement and brand management through PLAY, FLOW and Vi-Be.

Dr Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognised and named the psychological concept of ‘flow,’ a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity. Flow is the state of concentration and engagement that can be achieved when completing a task that challenges one’s skills. The theory suggests that flow can be achieved when the balance is struck between the individual’s skill level and the level of challenge presented by the task. When the task is too easy, individuals may become bored and disengaged, while when the task is too difficult, individuals may become anxious and stressed. Effective gamification strategies and gamification marketing designs are flow-dependent and usually lead to immersion, a condition of sustained participation in a task.

Gamification marketing – SWOT analysis:

Strengths:

1. Well designed gamification marketing can elicit brand love and customer loyalty via customer brand engagement.
2. Gamification marketing can attract new customers as well as engender repeat purchase.
3. It is an innovative marketing strategy which largely appeals to the interests and fancies of the digital community.
4. It is highly effective and rewarding looking at the strategic fusion of psychology and technology in human-computer interaction.

Weaknesses:

1. Gamification marketing sometimes can be poorly designed, thereby yielding poor or no marketing effects.
2. Its use is erroneously confined to the digital economy and ecosystems.

Opportunities:

1. Gamification marketing is the oil in the combustion engine of service industries and service marketing.
2. It is a platform for customers to be co-creators of value with service providers.
3. Word-of-mouth marketing could be engendered as a result of attractive gamification marketing.
4. Though it is perceived to be the fusion of psychology and technology, gamification marketing sometimes does not have to be restricted to the digital space, it could also be achieved physically by leveraging the three pillars of gamification.

Threats:

1. Ethical concerns may arise due to how information obtained from customers is treated.

As an expert in gamification in my own right, I have observed that one of the weaknesses of gamification is lack of quality game design. Applying game elements without game design skills results in poor experiences. Quality game design is crucial. Furthermore, gamification works best when focused on developing new behaviours, not rewarding existing behaviours. There is a lot of attraction and attention that newness and the genuineness of an innovation commands.

Complexity in game design can lead to unfavourable user experience and poor outcomes of the intended ‘gameful’ experience expected of a user interface.

As I conclude, it is worthy of note that gamification marketing design must be ‘SIMPLE’: Solves problem, Innovative, Manipulative, Participatory, Learning-centred and Engaging.

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