Steph Gratton

As someone who works within the food industry, I have had a first-hand perspective on the gamification that has taken place in this specific business. In handling customer interactions, particularly if the brand I work for has been implementing new products and marketing strategies, I am able to discuss my experiences as both an employee in the industry as well as a customer myself.

Gamification in businesses applies differing gaming elements than that in the health or education sectors. With an emphasis on the need to build and increase profits, the strategy of gamification is less about improving individuals, in terms of self and others, and more about encouraging customers and consumers to purchase products, particularly new products that big businesses try to push.

There have been so many examples of commercial gamification, particularly in this modern age in which the majority of the population has access to phones and the internet. The explosion of popularity of Pokémon Go in 2016, and the subsequent result of businesses making money off of it, are stark examples of commercial gamification produced for the purpose of increasing profits. This includes businesses encouraging customers to collect rewards from ‘PokéStops’ if they purchase a certain product, such as meals from restaurants and being gifted free unlimited data from T-Mobile.

Additionally, the creation of ‘PokéTree’, which is a kind of marketplace service wherein users can buy and sell items and even high-levelled accounts, highlights that gamification in business is not necessarily only undertaken by million-dollar businesses, but that even individuals can make use of gamification to help set up a business. Similarly, and more recently, the formation of ‘Nookazon’, the ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ equivalent of ‘PokéTree’ and Amazon’ and provides the same services of allowing users to interact in order to buy and sell products, only serves to further emphasise this.

As a contrast to the digital world, businesses recently have created applications that allow users to ‘play to win’, or by downloading the app and playing the game, users can win prizes. These prizes or rewards include free products, such as food, drinks and even shopping. A few years ago, my workplace’s head office implemented their own version of these kinds of apps. In downloading it myself, I was able to see the appeal in terms of addicting gameplay akin to that of Google’s T-Rex game, as well as viewed it from the perspective of an employee of the company, in that I was more interested in the rewards and what products we would likely be selling the most of. To put it simply, I examined which rewards were easiest to win, knowing that even a casual player would be able to achieve that one.

Overall, it is incredibly interesting to examine gamification in businesses from the perspectives of both a consumer that gets to be engaged in these applications, as well as from an employee’s wherein I get to look at this use of gamification through a more logistical and business-based standpoint, despite me not being in charge of said business.

REFERENCES

• Pokémon Go by Eduardo Woo (CC BY 2.0)
• Zubereitung von Kaffee mit einer professionellen Kaffeemaschine by Marco Verch (CC BY 2.0)