Gamification on steroids

This is brilliant. People playing games for rewards they can redeem (duh). More in-depth. People making an actual effort for their reward, and having fun doing it. The effort made (playing the game) is something I feel strongly about, especially as companies freely customize the deal offered. This amongst others means that the company is able to track what people are prepared to do for what. I know this is sweetened by the fact that they're playing games, and different games have different effort levels. I feel this will be much more effective than low-ball dealsites like groupon. I have my feelings regarding groupon, which almost anonymizes the actual vendor, leaving them feeling raped by the scavanger-like clientele, only looking for the cheapest possible, I am talking from personal experience having launched a few campaigns.

As the the businesses in article state;

"We prefer Dobango over other sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, because Dobango has helped bring in higher quality customers that are more likely to come back rather than clients looking for one time low-ball deals, who are not likely to become repeat customers."

This is where the money's at.

User adoption is incredibly important. However, having a community with a large userbase, you have a responsability to keep them happy. To do so, having an inventory/product/service to offer your users is what will keep them coming back, ergo, keeping your suppliers happy is equally important.

Groupon is great, but me in my expertise as a marketing manager/consultant, the cost of marketing was far too great, and the clientele produced wouldn´t really come back again to our hotel. I'm sure groupon works for businesses that can support that high level of discount, such as established franchises and larger corporations, but our hotel, with 15 in staff and 30 rooms, could never run more than one promotion every quarter. It creates a scavangerlike mentality, which is great for groupon but useless for the businesses. Its appealing to the most basic of their animal instincts cheap=awesome. It´s a cheap form of marketing that I highly dissapprove of. I could make a lot more money just telling every single client I've worked with to slash prices and simply undercut the competition, but this is no way of driving innovation forward. You want to create more business, innovate and sell at higher price. Perpetually pricing yourself lower than your competition will eventually leave you like one of the now many defunct, outdated and out-right shitty hotels populating the Cancun beaches. (I'm a hotel marketing consultant in Mexico and the Riviera Maya).

And now i'm done unleashing my frustration over shortsighted marketers.