Attribution Model In Consumer Behavior

This paper presents the concept and prototype of a gamified smartphone application for enhancing the checkout process at supermarket cash desks. The application realizes a self-service system applied within a laboratory experiment conducted with 65 participants. A comparison to the traditional process shows a significant increase in customer motivation and user experience. As its primary aspect, the study investigates the impact of personality traits on the users’ evaluation of the gamified service. The surveyed personality traits include computer-related causal attributions, trust, and technology readiness. Attributions can be understood as individuals’ causal explanations for events influencing their emotions, motivation, and behavior. Results

Experience, expertise, but also self-confidence and technology readiness play an important role for how people interact with such systems. This especially applies when problems arise [26]. In this regard, the Attribution Theory is a new and promising approach to explain general types of user behavior and to optimize self-service checkouts for meeting the users’ needs. Attribution theory deals with the explanations people find for situations of success and failure and correlates those beliefs to subsequent emotions, motivation, and

[32] examined the use of gamification to promote a sustainable buying behavior for fast moving consumer goods. They found that customers in general are willing to participate in gamified services. Nevertheless, the results cannot be generalized, as different personality traits demand for different ways of implementing gamification elements. The authors even state that a gamification scheme needs to be customizable and personalized to become efficient.

Gamification is also to be found to enhance the retail experience in online shopping in general [25]. Insley and Nunan propose to adjust the way of integrating game elements into the shopping experience depending on the customers’ shopping task (e.g., recreational vs. functional shopping). In addition they found that gamification is able to influence consumer behavior, e.g. reducing undesirable actions as the misuse of postage policies.

An example for gamification in brick and mortar comes from Starbucks [7]. They managed to increase customer engagement and sales by implementing a rewards loyalty program. Using a personal Starbucks card, consumers can track their expenses and level up through additional purchases. As a reward they for example get free drinks. From the company’s point of view the concept primarily focuses on driving additional