I came across old gamification marketing strategy

If today you know about points, digital vouchers, stars, meet Trading Stamps. This marketing strategy was famous around the 20th century throughout early 2000s. These days it is quite scarce to see a business applying this idea. But the other day, I found a coffee shop that still uses this strategy in its traditional sense. I find it extremely unique as many cafes are leaving this system and strategy to keep gain a loyal customer. Although this strategy isn't really gone, it just transforms into different form these days. For example, Starbucks or many big coffee chains, they have an app itself to collect digital stamps or stars. But does this marketing strategy in its traditional sense worth re-visiting or left for good?

The explanation of what trading stamps are can be seen in that infographic. I doubt many early Gen Z and Gen alpha are familiar with this idea but those who are born just after 1996 might still be familiar of this one. It’s such a cute concept but actually has its cons both from customer and business owner perspective. From the customer view, even for me, I almost lost the card a couple of times. And back in the day when I was shopping at local market chain where they give me stickers, I was also still missing a lot of stickers.

The problem from the business owner is that sometimes their employee don’t offer this or even ask while it should be in their SOP (standard operating procedure).

This happened many times before when I was at the supermarket and had to ask for it. Even at the cafe where I am currently collecting those stamps, some of their barista didn't ask me about it. At the same time, at a greater scale with inflation, this might not be a viable means of retail competition or even in FnB business² such as the study from the journal of Marketing attempting to find out. While it's not a thing anymore, in the past many marketing studies were conducted based on this gamification in retails.

Somehow, this type of gamification works for me. I get obsessed with collecting the stamps & you can see above, I need one more to get 1 free menu from their list. It’s interesting to see that this kind of concept is still exist because to pull this off, the business owner must have either stickers and the stamps which also aren't cheap and not necessary cost-effective. In my opinion while today everything is already digitized, to see this traditional concept and re-introducing them to younger generation is a good thing while for older generation, this strategy can feel quite nostalgic.