The Impact of Personalized Gamification and Rewards on Customer Trust and Loyalty in UK Retail

Research relevance: A highly practical study providing deep insights into consumer beliefs, allowing for better loyalty program design amongst UK retailers. Research goal: Practical research providing deep insights into consumer perceptions, beliefs and recommendations, allowing for better loyalty program design and implementation amongst UK retailers. Research methods: a 14-question survey (271 participants) and 4 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Main findings: Only 8.10% of respondents had complete trust when it came to gamified retail experiences. 62.70% of participants had concerns regarding how retailers use their data. The main concern related to AI-driven gamification was data privacy and tracking (54.20%). Nearly half of respondents (49.10%) felt AI-driven personalized gamification will pose risks to their wellbeing, financial habits and purchasing habits in the future. In-depth interviews revealed that customer trust could be improved by removing gamification from essential products or making it an optional feature, increasing the transparency of data use with user-friendly display of information, explicit consent, and other features.