Gamify your product promotions

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📝 Context

Topic: Promotions | Ecommerce
For: B2C. Can be tested for B2B 
Research date: May 2024
Universities: Cornell University, Yale University

You want to run a special promotion to celebrate your clothing brand’s 20th birthday. 

You decide to run a 20% off campaign on your best-selling products, but you feel it’s just too… simple. You’ve run endless of these % off promotions in the past and you want this one to make a big splash. But how?

Science says, a nice way to make it even more effective could be as simple as gamifying the product discount.

P.S.: Gamifying promotions works particularly well when discounts are small. Making discounts a gamble makes people up to 92.6% more likely to choose an uncertain deal (e.g. 10% chance for a free night’s stay) vs. a small guaranteed discount (5% off per night).

📈 Recommendation

If you sell fun and pleasurable products (e.g. snacks, fashion, entertainment), consider gamifying your promotions:

• Decide which discount % you want to offer.

• Then use games (e.g. a spinning wheel, a roll of dice) to randomly allocate which product will be promoted.

People will see you as more fun, and be more likely to buy.

Do not use this for products that are practical and functional (e.g. cleaning supplies), as it backfires.

🎓 Findings

• People prefer and are more likely to buy fun and enjoyable products (e.g. clothes) that are selected for a promotion by chance, compared to identical products selected intentionally (e.g. a fixed selection of promoted products).

• In 13 experiments with Meta ads across different product categories (e.g. ice cream, digital content, artwork), researchers found that when people were told the promotion was based on chance (vs chosen deliberately), they:

  • Were 67% more likely to click on a button to find out more 

  • Said they were 24.3% more interested in purchasing the product

  • Perceived the product 36.6% more fun

  • Thought the brand was 14.9% more fun

  • Were 15.9% more likely to buy another product from the same company

• The effect is:

  • Weaker when the random selection is described in a dry, unplayful way (e.g. “Discount product selector”)

  • Reversed for functional products (e.g. a nicotine gum to stop smoking)

🧠 Why it works

• We see random and gamified product selections as playful.

• This makes us see the whole experience and brand as more fun.

• Which makes us more likely to buy from them.

• These gamified promotions align well with the image we have of fun brands.

• However, we expect companies selling functional products to choose products intentionally.

• Which makes random promotions backfire for these kinds of brands.

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✋ Limitations

• It’s unclear how the amount of the promotion (e.g. 10% vs 30% off) changes the effect. Similarly, we don’t know how the effect would work on luxury items where even small promotions have a big impact on the total amount off.

• The study only looked at % off discounts, it’s unclear how the effect is for other kinds of promotions such as free products or free shipping.

• The experiments did not analyze how the effect holds in the long-term when the strategy is used repeatedly. It likely weakens as the novelty wears off and the strategy looks less fun.

👀 Real-life example

Cosmetics brand Blume uses a fun game for their promotions. Wherever the ball lands, that’s the promotion people get.

❌ Issue: Some of Blume’s products have a very functional purpose (e.g. anti-acne), which could make the randomness of the promotion backfire.

✅ Solution: There are a few tactics Blume could use to make their promotional strategy even more effective:

• Use this promotion only for fun products. For example, by including it only on their lip products page, rather than across the whole website.

• Use “x amount off” instead of “x% off” when promotions are run on a specific category only.

• They could even use a different strategy and gamify the 5% off. Since it’s a small discount, making it a gamble would make it more effective.

🔍 Study type

Online experiments and field experiment (Meta ads experiment with 10,293 users)

📖 Research

Promoting a product without increasing the promotion budget: How chance in promotions can heighten consumer demand. Journal of Consumer Psychology (May 2024).

🏫 Researchers

• Alexander Goldklank Fulmer. Cornell University

• Taly Reich. Yale University

Remember: This is a scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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