According to various studies, the global market size of gamification will touch $37billion by 2027, the value of gamification industry in North America is put above $2billion! A noticeable size indeed.

Gamification marketing incorporates fun elements as loyalty programs, challenges, quizzes, interactive programs to incentivize buying and participation. It is a fun way to be competitive and set new conversion parameters. For years, gamification has only been limited to marketing and sales, it has shown its worth in retailing. The gaming strategy and mechanics have limitless scope for handling issues related with retail inventory management and improvising employee relationship. Over here, an attempt has been made to get an overview on gamification and its prowess.

What is Gamification in Retail?

Gamification is a mechanics aimed at increasing customer brand loyalty through games. Retailers leverage gamification for attracting new consumers and enhance the shopping experience of old and new ones. Powered by Artificial Intelligence, retailers use tools as virtual reality for in-store participation or mobile apps for outside the store. Take for example, beauty brands use virtual reality to let the customers explore products that complement skin tone, personality and make them comfortable. A simple game to empower consumers to spend the money on the right products and help increase sales for the retailer while also contributing towards higher conversion rates. Retailers can offer such dynamic gamification online as well as at brick-n-mortar stores.

Let’s delve deeper to figure out how gamification in retail can bring real-time insights, why user-friendly interface is helpful in efficient inventory management and how they contribute in proactive decision making. With numerous gamification concepts to explore, retailers must be able to find an equilibrium to balance gamification marketing for eCommerce retailing and offline business.

Types of Gamifications in Retail

1. Competition: Promoting friendly competition with friends and family by sharing scoreboards through social media accounts can encourage participation, involve others to play and win, especially if there are rewards or surprises waiting at the end. Even though society is moving towards isolated life, appreciation and applause are always welcome. These games also help in getting insights on the thought process of the potential customers. For example: With festive season round the corner, volume of responses for grabbing discounts or vouchers for purchasing a product, shows the demand for the item. This betters inventory management.

2. Loyalty Programs: Offering customers with loyalty programs which can earn them sales preview both online and offline or give an integrated advantage of both the worlds, does not cost business anything but can help in increase sales. An online preview, adding to wish list encourage customers to stay loyal to brands or vendors.

3. Challenges: Capitalizing on the challenging temperament of people always pays. Retailers can ask target consumers to download app to play and share posts. For example, Nike had channelized the competitive nature of its target audience by asking them to download app and share their best moment with the shoe or their running expeditions. Interactions like these, help in getting closer to the audience. A virtual game which rewards consumers with virtual currency is also appreciated if it can be redeemed for small favors as free shipping, or gifts.

4. Virtual Reality: With the advent of technology, gamification has become tech-savvy through virtual or augmented reality games. Consumers garner virtual experience with the product and which assist them in purchase. VR has great success rate for furniture, clothes, shoes, makeup or equipment for sports merchants.

5. Referrals or Collaboration: Retailers can work out a plan for collaboration or referrals to earn points and win freebies.

Gamification in retail should be customized as per the requirement of a business. The idea behind the concept is to increase conversion and incentivize spending by the target customer.

Gamification in Inventory Management

As known gamification uses games to capture customer loyalty and reinforce engagement. Recently, businesses have discovered it is an excellent tool and strategy for retail inventory management and other operational issues. Leveraging gamification in warehouse directly reflects on how to increase employee engagement and direct workforce for improving performance of the organization by timely completion of work.

Gamification is relaxed and fun mechanics to create camaraderie among employees from different backgrounds. This is especially important to support seamless integration of supply chain management operations. Innovative use of gamification reduces any prejudice and apprehensions among the employees. Challenges and collaboration through gamified systems improve employee engagement by bringing spontaneity, teamwork, knowledge share and fun at work. By leveraging gamification at various levels of supply chain operations, the stress can be reduced and a more friendly environment co-exists with improved creative thinking as there is exchange of ideas through games. Some innovative ideas for gamification in inventory management can be, though not limited:

• New Projects Ideation: A competitive game for identifying new avenues for brand growth can be designed. Since this can only be achieved when employees have accurate knowledge about data flowing from various retail operations, employee accuracy will improve.

• Teams Consisting Leaders and Employees: For efficient functioning of warehouse and the organization, ranks could be melted away by creating gaming teams. This would break barriers, open communication and workplace gets more friendly.

• Gamification for Assigning Work: Motivation to be the winner brings out innate qualities of individuals. This help in recognizing and understanding employee’s strengths and weaknesses, based on that work can be assigned to right profile who can be real help in streamlining operations for inventory management or warehouse.

• Gamification for Identifying Silent Talents: Some employees are not comfortable in sharing ideas. They can be motivated through games like undercover agents, through user-interface, such personalities can stay anonymous and share ideas. To motivate them, points can be displayed on leaderboards through codes.

• Innovation Hackathons: Hackathons on sharing ideas for management and channelizing resources can be organized for optimization of inventory management.