• by Aaron Baar , November 3, 2011

Sensing electronics consumers want a little more than mere information when visiting a corporate Web site, Samsung Electronics America is adding some game tactics, such as badges and rewards, to its home page.

“A lot of consumers, while they’re shopping, are looking quite aggressively, and we wanted to provide a way to reward that engagement,” Kris Narayanan, vice president of digital marketing for Samsung Electronics America, tells Marketing Daily. “We wanted to add context and relevance earlier in their [shopping] process.”

Through the initiative, dubbed Samsung Nation, consumers can earn points, unlock badges and move up and down a leaderboard as they undertake various activities on the home page. Some of the activities are merely passive (such as watching videos), while others require more participation (such as commenting on articles or writing product reviews). The idea, Narayanan says, is to increase the consumer engagement with the brand.

“Traditionally, electronics consumers are going to retail stores and then occasionally going to main [corporate] Web sites,” he says. “We’d like nothing more than for them to come to us more often and stay longer.”

Badges and points will be rewarded only through engagement on the site, not through the content that may actually get posted. A player posting a five-star review will get the same amount of points as one posting a one-star review, Narayanan says. The policy follows guidelines the company established in 2008 when it started allowing product reviews on its home site.

“We found the transparence with which consumers are writing the reviews is something we cherish,” Narayanan says. “Allowing consumers to post whatever they want to in honest feedback is the right way to go.”

The Samsung Nation project is separate from the company’s upcoming Facebook-oriented Olympic Genome project, which looks to connect Olympic sports fans with athletes they may not be aware of through the information shared in their public profile. However, Narayanan notes, they may share some connective tissue in the future.

“It’s a different initiative at the moment,” Narayanan says. “However, the underlying idea is the same. If we see fit, there will be bridges between the two initiatives. But there’s nothing planned at the moment.”