Source: (Google,2016)
Smartphone Figures
Incredibly figures estimated represents, mobile smart phones users are increasing from 1.5 billion in 2014 to 2.5 billion users within 2019 across the globe (Statista, 2016 & Kissonergis,2015). An estimated 5 million mobile apps were available for downloaded within June 2016 (Statista,2016).
Gamification & Business
Gamification integrates gaming design allowing users a sense of “motivation, engagement, achievement and status” (badgeville, 2016, Edwards. et al, 2016, Strohmeyer, 2013). “Gamification global market will grow to $11.1 billion by 2020” (Technologyadvice,2016). However, Gartner emphasises in “2014 that 80% of all gamified apps will fail analysts predict” (Lunden, 2012).
Blog Contents
This blog identifies various mobile business apps for review. In order to suggest how gamification could improve the user experiences! Lastly, academic literature will be used to provide a deeper depth of knowledge.
Company Mobile Apps Reviews
Domino’s Pizza App
Source: (Domino’s Pizza UK,2011)
Domino’s Pizza has created a very useful and professional mobile app and is free to download. The brand colours throughout provides displays professionalism. The app functions include; nearest store, menu, orders, meal deals, contact us, legal information and connect to Xbox One. Therefore, providing relevant information that is accurate and concise. Gamification provides benefits such as: – “enhancing brand awareness and loyalty, innovation, and online user engagement” (Kankanhalli et. al, 2012). Dominos could gamify their mobile app by having badges collected for the pizza’s purchased by customer to gain discounts and rewards. Therefore, offering customer recognition and financial rewards creates customer added value.
Cineworld App
Also free to download for cinema customers. Overall, the app is useful and professional. This is because brand colours are used well reflecting on quality and information is accurate.
App functions include: –
- Viewing the nearest cinema by direction and maps
- Book tickets directly through app
- View show times for films
- See upcoming films and current film trailers
- Other Cinema services
Organisations seem to increase their efforts towards gamification enabling customers and employees to engage better, by developing memorable experiences and events (Blair, 2014 & Keller, 2003). Cineworld should have gamified rewards for kids to receive money off by a spinner having different discounts as shown below.
Furthermore, personalised targeted email rewards for Christmas, Black Friday, Cyber week, Easter and Birthdays. That are tailored to the type of films the customer watch to increase brand loyalty and consumer engagement.
Lessons: Pitfalls of bad gamification
- Game rules are poorly designed (Graham,2013)
- Reward such as badges and accomplishments are not motivating. There needs to be financial incentives as well as recognition (Graham,2013)
- Game focus group testing and making changes from feedback (Graham,2013)
Successful Company Mobile App Gamification Reviews
Nike+ Running App
Extraordinarily, 18 million global members use Nike+ running (Comstock,2013). Gamification is well used throughout the app. Live track mapping by using real live data. Therefore, making the experience memorable by seeing their direct real live data. Music incorporated adds motivation and makes the running experience more enjoyable. The best feature is connecting to social networks to share information because others can compete against each other; enabling competition, fun and social awareness.
Starbucks Reward App
Source: (Starbucks Coffee, 2016)
Incredibly the number of active monthly mobile users account for 12 million across U.S and Canada (Johnson, 2014). However, these figures should have been overall global figures to provide a realistic impact from the Starbuck rewards app. Customers gain convenience, time saved by ordering directly from the app. Starbucks rewards app increases customer brand loyalty and engagement by offering rewards such as, free refills and free drinks. This makes the experience enjoyable and provides real financial rewards by savings made. I particularly like the free reward for a customer birthday. Making the whole experience personalised and making the customer feel special.
Mobile Gamification Frameworks Compared
Figure 1: Current Approach Figure 2: Social Engagement
Source: (Hofacker, et. al,2016) Source: (Dale, 2014)
Figure 1- Illustrates the many different components necessary for an organisation to meet the many marketing outcomes, outlined above through gamification leading to marketing outcomes (Hofacker et al,2016). The framework is quite useful as, one can break down components in order to create a mobile gamified app business plan. However, the framework should address consumer’s goals aligned to business objectives, which it fails to do so. Furthermore, the gamification elements could be improved by having real business case examples to show the framework can be used.
Figure 2- Reflects on ways gamification can socially engage individuals (Dale,2014). This is simple and easy to understand by images. Reflecting on different user experiences. However, one could suggest both frameworks could be improved. Organisations should consider both frameworks as they both play a significant importance to the user’s end experience.
Conclusion
To conclude gamification is a brilliant and powerful tool that enables organisations, too “enhances loyalty, customer engagement and motivation” (Ivo & Jan, 2013, Gabe & Christopher,2011). Gamification mobile apps provide a memorable and fun experience. Overall, gamification mobile app strategy enables organisations to “innovate ways to customer engagement and boost sales” (Rodrigues, et, al., 2016). However, organisations should also consider the pitfalls of gamification to avoid.
References
Badgeville. (2016) Gamification. [Online] Available at:<https://badgeville.com/wiki/Gamification> [Accessed 23rd December 2016].
Blair, B. (2014), “Befriend the trend: gaming goes to work”, Finweek, January 30, pp. 7.
Comstock, J. (2013) 7 fitness apps with 16 million or more downloads. [Online] Available at:< http://www.mobihealthnews.com/24958/7-fitness-apps-with-16-million-or-more-downloads/page/0/3> [Accessed 27th December 2016].
Dale, S., (2014) “Gamification: Making work fun, or making fun of work?”, Journal Business Information Review, Vol. 31, Issue. 2, pp.82-90.
Domino’s Pizza UK. (2011) Domino’s iPhone and Android pizza ordering app. [Online] Available at:< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AJCnIM-yDg&feature=youtu.be> [Accessed 29th December 2016].
Edwards EA, Lumsden J, Rivas C, Steed L, Edwards L, Thiyagarajan A, Sohanpal R, Caton H and Walton R (2016). ‘Gamification’ for Health Behaviour Change in Smartphone Apps”.
Gabe Zichermann & Christopher Cunningham, (2011) Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps, O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA
Graham, C. (2013) 5 Reasons Gamification Projects Fail. [Online] Available at:< http://technologyadvice.com/blog/information-technology/5-reasons-gamification-projects-fail/> [Accessed 27th December 2016].
Happy Everline. (2016) The New Nike Running App. [Online] Available at:< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-bV1Lar1k> [Accessed 29th December 2016].
Hofacker, C.F., de Ruyter, K., Lurie, N.H., Manchanda, P. & Donaldson, J., (2016) “Gamification and Mobile Marketing Effectiveness”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 34, pp. 25-36.
Ivo Blohm, Jan Marco Leimeister., (2013) Gamification, Journal of Business and Information Systems Engineering, Vol. 5, Issue (4), pp. 275–278.
Johnson, L. (2014) Starbucks Look to Share Its App Payment System With Other Retailers. [Online] Available at:<http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/starbucks-looks-share-its-app-payment-system-other-retailers-159100> [Accessed 27th December 2016].
Kankanhalli A, Taher M, Cavusoglu H, Kim S H, (2012). GAMIFICATION: A NEW PARADIGM FOR ONLINE USER ENGAGEMENT. Thirty Third International Conference on Information Systems. Orlando. pp.1-10.
Keller, K.L. (2003a), “Brand synthesis: the multidimensionality of brand knowledge”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 29, Issue. 4, pp. 595-600.
Kissonergis, P. (2015). Smartphone Ownership, Usage And Penetration By Country. [Online] Available at:<http://thehub.smsglobal.com/smartphone-ownership-usage-and-penetration> [Accessed 23rd December 2016].
Lunden, I. (2012) Badges Beware: 80% Of Gamification Apps Will End Up Being Loser, Say Gartner. [Online] Available at: <https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/27/badges-beware-80-of-gamification-apps-will-end-up-being-losers-says-gartner/> [Accessed 25th December 2016].
McCollom, L., (2016) How Mobile Apps Use Fundamentals of Gamification to Engage Mobile App Users. [Online] Available at:<https://www.urbanairship.com/blog/do-you-feel-lucky> [Accessed 29th December 2016].
NIAPs (2016) Cineworld iPhone & iPad Review. [Online] Available at:< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q9pfFiNleU> [Accessed 29th December 2016].
Rodrigues, L.F., Costa, C.J. & Oliveira, A. 2016, “Gamification: A framework for designing software in e-banking”, Journal Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 62, pp. 620-634.
Starbucks Coffee. (2016) Starbucks Rewards, Made Even Better With the App. [Online] Available at:< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ScwYcBA7E> [Accessed 29th December 2016].
Statista. (2016). Number of apps available in leading app stores. [Online] Available at:<https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores> [Accessed 23rd December 2016].
Statista. (2016). Number of smartphone users worldwide from 2014 to 2020 (in billions). [Online] Available at:<https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide> [Accessed 23rd December 2016].
Strohmeyer, R. (2013) Gamification: using play to motivate employees and engage customers. [Online] Available at:<http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047564/gamification-using-play-to-motivate-employees-and-engage-customers.html> [Accessed 23rd December 2016].
Technology advice. (2016) Compare 106 Gamification Platforms. [Online] Available at:<http://technologyadvice.com/gamification/> [Accessed 25th December 2016].