Sipping Success: Starbucks Gamification Brew

Anamika Aggarwal
3 min readSep 20, 2023

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In a world filled with daily routines, there was me — a coffee enthusiast with a taste for adventure. My Starbucks experience began as just another coffee run, but little did I realize that it would lead me into a world of stars, rewards, and never-ending surprises. Have you ever wondered how simply purchasing a cup of coffee could make your day more exciting and memorable?

The answer lies in blending gamification and creating a pleasant digital user experience. With the ability to customize the look of the app’s icon, check your reward balance, manage your membership cards, and more. When it comes to getting customers to use their apps, Starbucks is the clear winner.

Starbucks Rewards

Starbucks Rewards, members get free beverages and pastries. Gamification helps users reach higher reward tiers and earn stars for purchases. Customers earn stars for each purchase, and the app uses gamification techniques to encourage users to collect stars and achieve higher reward tiers. Achievements, levels, and images encourage repeat purchasing. If you’ve earned 50 stars, you have the option between two gifts worth 25 stars each, or one reward worth 50 stars. They have the option to keep striving for more stars in order for bigger rewards.

On customers’ birthdays, they receive a special birthday reward from Starbucks, which adds an element of surprise and delight to the app experience.

Progress Tracking

Users can see their progress towards the next reward and how many stars they need to gain benefits. App engagement and spending are both boosted by the ability to record and view progress.

App Icon Personalization

To further facilitate a consistent and personal experience across all of a user’s devices, Starbucks allows them to alter the appearance of their app icons based on a set of provided alternatives.

Challenges/Tasks

Occasionally, Starbucks will give out daily challenges or award extra stars. Users may be encouraged to try something new on the menu, come in during off-peak hours, or plan ahead by engaging with these challenges.

The ability of Starbucks’ loyalty programme to maintain its customers’ ongoing interest in the company is one of its greatest strengths.
The Starbucks Rewards programme has some of the highest levels of participation of any retail reward programme. There were reportedly be 28.7 million active Starbucks reward members by October 2022, as reported by CNN. The expansion of Starbucks’ rewards programme by 16% annually.

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