McDonald´s
McDonald's recently began a simple, yet effective method of motivating visitors to their cafes for repeated and regular visits. They used several elements of gamification to accomplish this.
McCafé
McCafé visitors are regularly rewarded for their loyalty. For many years, they collected stamps on paper cards. However, McDonald's recently came up with a 5+1 free app, where all lovers of McDonald's coffees can see how many coffees they have collected and how many more they need for a free reward.
A big plus of this simple gamification element is that McDonald's rewards you with any expensive coffee, not just a cheap basic one.
Happy Meal
McDonald's traditionally targets its youngest customers. Therefore, it's not surprising that children can have fun in their app with the current offer of favorite surprise boxes, known as Happy Meals.
For example, Spring 2023 brought the opportunity to enter the creative world of Karma's World. The whole system is perfectly designed so that children perceive it with all senses - sight, hearing, taste, and touch.
Starbucks
Another well-known business using elements of gamification to increase customer motivation is Starbucks. Interestingly, they also target a loyalty collection of stars, which the customer can then exchange for a favorite coffee drink.
Starbucks also came up with the option to top up your Starbucks card in their app and then use it for payment in brick-and-mortar stores.
Lidl
The last example of gamification use within brick-and-mortar stores is supermarkets. As an example, we chose the German chain Lidl. In their app, they offer loyal customers not only current discounts that other customers can't access.
Within the app, you receive scratch-off tickets when you reach a certain volume of purchases, with a favorite discount waiting for you. The app allows you to scratch off the tickets electronically, thereby arousing the 'player's' excitement in customers.