Bob liked the fabric but wasn’t sure the colour matched his socks

Marketing is about moving people along the sales funnel – from target, to suspect, to prospect, to sales lead, to customer. It’s a process with different tools and experiences applied along the way. Recently, smart brains have started to recognise the principles of gaming in marketing – in areas such as collecting frequent flyer miles, showing completeness bars on social media profile pages and creating competitive scores.

In an article titled, “How do solve a problem like IKEA?”, the author argues that IKEA’s convoluted flow, which is designed like a 1km hike past every Vallvik, Fillsta and Abba lookalike on display is essentially in the same sweet spot as gaming (somewhere between boredom and anxiety). IKEA apparently applies the principles of gamification at each of its stores, optimizing the flow so that shoppers build an experience and buy more.

The Marketing Thought

The marketing application of gaming (called gamification) is very intelligently adopted by many organizations (eg Weight Watchers and Nike+). I like IKEA, but I don’t think that it uses the gamification principle; it merely makes you slog a kilometre through its entire store before you can buy a picture frame. IKEA’s brand is strong enough that people overlook the frustration of hiking round the store because of its product quality. So it can choose to ignore the downsides and just market the good points.

Just a thought.

Tim

Related Blogs:

Why Gaming Matters to Marketing

How to Build Gaming into Your Marketing

Picture licensed by Kheel Centre, Cornell University

Tagged as: customer experience, retail marketing