In China shopping has become a game

By Erik Wernberg-Tougaard

First you get their attention, then you sell them your product. This is basically the idea behind gamification (i.e. the use of game design in non-game settings) which has become a big deal in China.

With China’s rapidly evolving e-commerce industry, more and more people are buying things online, and many Chinese companies has turned the shopping experience into a game. Gamification is nothing new, but it is still only in its early stages globally. The total market is estimated to reach as much as 38.7 billion USD by 2026, more than a fivefold increase from its 2019 value of 7.1 billion.

Learning from the Chinese experience with gamification may be a viable option for European companies to improve sales, become first-movers and stand out among its competitors while targeting customers in a more engaging and effective manner.

Entertainment over efficiency

For many consumers in the West, buying products needs to be as easy and efficient as possible. It is about saving time, so you can get on with your life. Get online, find the products you want, and finally add them to your basket and check-out. There seems to be a much clearer line between shopping and gaming, and often consumers become annoyed if they need to spend time watching commercials or advertisements when gaming.

This is very different from China. Here the e-commerce ecosystem is a highly complex web of key opinion leaders, key opinion consumers, livestreaming, and gamification, which holds the consumers spellbound for hours while they browse through products and services. Online shopping has become a national past time, and especially during corona, people have had even more time to be on their phones and this trend has increased further.

A clear distinction between the West and China, is that in China shopping and gaming are integrated. The games and algorithms that propose what games to play are so well-developed, that people are captivated for hours, in what can seem to a online universe. The consumers, or players, can spend hours playing, discovering, and purchasing products that they like, often in close contact with their friends and families.

How gamification works in e-commerce

1: Mobile pay app increases green behaviour

Alibaba’s Ant Forest is probably one of the most well-known examples of gamification, due to its popularity and its positive environmental impact. Ant Forest is a tree-planting mini-game which can be found in the Alipay app and seeks to support a low-carbon lifestyle while protecting the environment.

Players grow their virtual trees by doing things that are good for the environment, such as walking instead of driving, buying e-tickets instead of paper tickets, or using Alipay to do transactions etc.

These virtual trees are then later planted in some of China’s dry regions, where they can contribute to the environment.

As of 2020, Ant Forest had as many as 550 million participants, and had planted more than 220 million trees. In addition to this, it has avoided an estimated 8 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2019, by encouraging people to avoid CO2-intensive activities. For this, Ant also won the United Nations Environmental Protection’s “Champions of the Earth” award in 2019, due to its positive impact on the environment.

The users of Ant Forest are extremely active on the platform, and they keep returning to nurture and watch their tree grow. This means more payments made with Alipay, and its large userbase means that Alipay can sell more products through its platform too.

2: Virtual planting turns into actual fruit

Pinduoduo, the fastest growing tech company in the world, has launched a similar concept to Ant Forest. Here players also plant trees, but these trees grow fruits which can actually be harvested in real life. That means, that when the fruits are ripe, the players will receive the actual fruits in real life, as a reward. Among others, this have a positive impact on the rural community in China, which is often poor and do not have a strong position in the supply chain.

3: Collaborative games increase user retention

As part of the biggest online shopping festival in China, the Singles Day, Taobao developed a game where players had to get together in teams to build the highest skyscraper. Every day, a new competition between teams would start and run from 9 AM to 10 AM, after which the team that had invited most friends would win and earn vouchers and even cash prizes. More than 300 million people took part in this game over the course of a week, and the daily active users on the platform skyrocketed.

Why use gamification at all?

For the vast majority of businesses, the main function of gamification is to increase sales. However gamification has been criticised as a buzz word, and actual ROI can be hard to determine. But reaching more consumers and making sure that they spend as much time as possible in the app is therefore crucial. There are a number of ways in which companies can do this, and here we look at three of the most commonly used ones.

1: Activating users by enabling sharing

Getting new people to join a game can be difficult. But existing players are important to that end. In many of the games, the way to obtain certain artefacts or “coins” which can be used in the games, and as vouchers for buying things, is by sharing the game with your friends. This is a well-known strategy to attract new customers and is used in a number of industries. But nonetheless it works especially well when there is no initial price for joining as a new player, which often leads the existing players to invite many friends at a time.

2: Having a ”Task completed”-function

As part of the games, players often have to complete certain tasks to progress in the games. This can for instance be if you want a special fertilizer that will help you tree grow at a faster pace, or if your pet cat needs to grow faster. These tasks are often made in a way, so that the players are getting exposed to more products. For instance, a task to be completed would be to view discounted products for a certain amount of time, searching for a specific product, become a player in another game, or inviting friends. All of this is held up against a often substantial amount of big data, which ensures that the products recommended to you have a higher likelihood of being bought. This also ensures that consumers are exposed to a number of products they would not have searched for themselves.

3: Giving out “rewards”

Almost all games by the big tech giants provide consumers with rewards such as cash, discounts or coupons, which can be used in the web shop. This ultimately leads to more purchases and for the dedicated players it is also a kind of acknowledgement of their dedication to the game. They may therefore be more likely to continue the game and gain further rewards which they can then spend in the online shop. Good for business!

Gamification is here to stay

There is thus huge potential for companies that are capable of utilizing and applying gamification, whether it is in finance, education, health or a completely different industry.

In the West, gamification has to larger extent been focused on education and health related industries, and there are still many opportunities to be pursued, especially in relation to the shopping and entertainment industries, where China has been strong to use gamification to nudge the behaviour of consumers. As the above examples shows, it is only the imagination that sets boundaries for how gamification can be used to increase user awareness, engagement and ultimately sales.

Most importantly, it is crucial for to be aware of whether or not this can contribute to your business, as gamification is also highly contextual and culturally dependent. Before you decide on whether and what kind of gamification to use, you should figure out why you want it, and what objective it will be fulfilling. Maybe your business can benefit from bring the ideas from games, video games, board games, sports, and so on into your way of doing business?

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Erik Wernberg-TougaardMay 4, 2021