Gamification as a Customer Loyalty Tool. Evidence from the Italian Banking Industry

Abstract Over the last few years, gamification, that is the adoption of gaming techniques in non-gaming contexts, has proved to be a powerful tool for customer loyalty and involvement, in many sectors such as, for example: e-learning, tourism, marketing, eco-sustainability and medical health. The objective of this paper is to focus attention on the Italian banking industry in order to investigate the level of implementation of gamification mechanics within the offer of banking products and services. The use of gamification could represent a good opportunity for banks to strengthen the relationship with customers, making a particularly boring activity enjoyable, just by leveraging emotions and psychological factors (fun and motivation). However, from the analysis of the universe of Italian banks taken into consideration, emerges a sector still little inclined to the assimilation of this approach and in the few cases observed a situation of poor diversification between the techniques of gamification. JEL classification numbers: G20, G21. Keywords: Digital banking, Mobile applications, Websites, Gamification, customer loyalty, Fun, Motivation, Banking products, Banking services, Banking industry, Italy.