I’m still playing along with the coursera course on Gamification. (See my initial reaction here)

Today our first assignment is due.

Here’s the scenario:

You are an employee of Cereals Incorporated, a large manufacturer of breakfast food products.  Your supervisor, Madison County, approaches you because she knows you recently took a course on gamification, which she has heard will revolutionize marketing.

She tells you that Cereals Inc. is about to release a new line of ready-to-eat breakfast pastries, and she wants to know whether to use gamification as part of the marketing strategy.  The breakfast pastries will be aimed at the 18-35 age bracket. Surveys show members of this demographic often skip breakfast because they don’t want to eat the typical cereals of their youth, and they are too active to cook their own breakfasts.  Market research indicates that the pastries are likely to appeal more to women than men by a 65%-35% ratio. Cereals Inc. has a 35% share of the overall breakfast food market, but only a 10% share of the fragmented ready-to-eat segment.

Provide as many reasons as you can why gamification could be a useful technique to apply to the situation your manager has presented to you.  Explain why these reasons address the specific scenario provided.  At this stage, focus on the problem rather than the solution.  In other words, describe the goals of the project, not the particular game elements or other techniques you plan to use.  We strongly encourage you to watch this week’s lecture segments before attempting this assignment.

Here’s my response:

Given that we are to concentrate more on generalities and not on specific game elements, the following are a few reasons that gamification could help this scenario.

This situation suffers from the following challenges:

1. The target demographic is unlikely to choose a breakfast food that seems too childish, but they also don’t cook.
2. The product has been shown to appeal more to women than men.

This solution assumes that Cereals Incorporated already has a web presence that it uses to advertise itself and its products. If not, this would be a prerequisite for Gamification.

The following are reasons to use Gamification:

1. Gamifying the website is likely to increase engagement with the product because the target age group are mostly gamers already and so they are predisposed to view this approach positively. This could also increase the relative proportions of males vs females who are likely to try the product.
2. Gamification could be used to get people to taste the product through motivation (badges, etc.) and social interaction (sharing information, thoughts, reviews, etc.).
3. Attitudes towards the product could potentially be shifted through gamification as it can become associated with fun. This could address the problem of the target demographic not wanting to eat something that might seem like ‘kid food’.
4. The more ‘normal’ interaction with the product becomes through more time spent on the website, the more likely people are to try the product.

Gamification could get more people to try the product initially, but if the product does not live up to the promise, it won’t change things for long. Ultimately, if the product isn’t sufficiently tasty/nutritious/economical, Gamification will fail to increase consumption.

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