Enhancing Customer Shopping Experience Through AR Mini-Games

In this research article we introduce an Augmented Reality (AR) application specifically designed to use in supermarkets. Our primary goal is to incorporate interactive AR mini-games that bring joy and digital engagement to customers during their visit. Additionally, we aim to investigate the impact of this campaign on brand awareness for both the featured goods and the supermarkets themselves. This paper presents the findings of a week-long user study conducted in two physical stores of a major retailer, involving a total of 431 participants. We analyse the impact of gameplay location and the game type (generic or product-specific) on the overall user experience. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of playing the mini-games on brand recall, which did not yield significant results during our observations. We found that our gamification approach for supermarket visits is particularly effective in attracting new customers rather than retaining existing ones.