Technology in retail marketing and the way forward with Gamification: An exploratory study

Abstract

The retail landscape is evolving rapidly as firms embrace innovative technologies in an attempt to stay ahead of the aggressive competition prevalent within the industry. The focus of this paper deems to be to explore technologies used by retail firms in the execution of their marketing efforts as well as the drivers and challenges in adopting Gamification for such efforts. A qualitative inductive research approach was taken whereby critical analysis of literature was followed through with in-depth interviews with marketing professionals in the moderntrade retail industry. The interviewees were selected through judgmental purposive sampling technique and the thematic analysis was conducted in generating insights. Findings show that the retail firms currently employ several technologies in line with those discussed in existing literature such as loyalty card systems, digital signage, VR technologies, online Gamification amidst others in carrying out their marketing efforts. Mobile Instant Messaging & Autonomous shopping carts are to be employed in the near future while firms are receptive to experiment on Hologram technologies and In-store Gamification. Furthermore, key drivers that propel firms to implement novel technology like Gamification are; to generate customer insights, enhance customer experience and achieve marketing related KPI targets. Conversely, inadequate technology infrastructure, justifying focus on a niche crowd of tech-oriented customers and slow ROI pose as challenges in the process of Gamification adoption. The study offers theoretical contribution to the knowledge gap in this domain especially in the Sri Lankan context and while it is limited to modern-trade retailers future research can be extended to other formats of retail.