It has been used successfully by companies like Vancouver’s Ayogo Games to help children copes with diabetes, and now more and more retailers – including Park Royal shopping mall – are using gamification to reach young shoppers.
Gamification is the use of app-based or online games as a way of influencing user behaviour, including consumer decisions.
For the next few weeks, the mall will be trying to encourage more shoppers in their teens and twenties to shop at the mall by using mobile gamification.
Shoppers are encouraged to download an app called Snappz, which they can use to scan QR codes they find throughout the mall and win coupons by participating in games.
The games include challenges and pop quizzes. Winners get coupons they can use at shops in the mall.
The U.S. company that makes the app – SparkBridge Interactive – is the same one that developed a treasure hunt gamification app for the Vancouver Aquarium.
The campaign is aimed at teens and shoppers in their early 20s. According to research by the Pew Research Center, 78% of people aged 12 to 17 have cellphones, about half of whom own smartphones.
“That’s a demographic who has not shopped a lot at Park Royal, but now they have all these new stores, and so it’s become a very appealing place for the demographic to be,” said Kirk Herrington, chairman of SparkBridge Interactive. “Games are a cheeky way to get them engaged and have some fun.”
The campaign will go on for the next four weeks.
@nbennett_biv
