Albert Heijn is the largest supermarket in the Netherlands with nearly 1,000 stores. That also means a large number of supermarket employees, from students to longtime employees. But how can the organisation encourage entrepreneurship among all employees? How does Albert Heijn make the store where they work their store?

Together with Albert Heijn, &ranj – part of &samhoud – found a way to stimulate and strengthen the commercial awareness of all these employees. Our approach for change? Gamification: a suitable means to influence the behaviour of a large number of people.

Our approach for change

We firmly believe in behavioural change through play. For Albert Heijn, we therefore started the Game Academy: a twelve-week co-creation process with three stores, in which we brainstormed and worked with customers and supermarket employees on smart game interventions. This resulted into several games and gamifications that are now actively being played in the supermarkets. ‘Appie Aandeel’ (Appie Stock) is an example of this.

What really changed?

‘Appie Aandeel’ is a game that is played in store by all supermarket employees. It capitalizes on the entrepreneurship of each individual in the form of a healthy and fun competition. With ‘Appie Aandeel’ and other games, we target all 100.000 Albert Heijn employees in the Netherlands. This not only ensures fun on the work- and store floor, but also ultimately works through into a better commercial performance of Albert Heijn and higher customer satisfaction.

The impact

570 stores enthusiastically played the game ‘Appie Aandeel’ with an average of 1300 players per day. This resulted in:

• 50 to 80% weekly sales growth;
• Higher customer satisfaction;
• More fun on the work- and store floor.