Why fun should be part of your business plan

Is fun part of your business plan?

It’s a reasonable question. Does a business have a responsibility to care about fun? Is providing a fun experience part of its mandate? I think fun is part of the overall mix of business purpose. For several reasons.

Why care about fun?

• Fun is profitable. One of our merchants – a beer brewer – shows us that. When the beer maker’s fortunes were sagging, he turned to e-commerce. And he pumped up the fun. Now instead of just selling beer, he creates an atmosphere of fun online, filling his site with blogs, photos, special offers and other interactive content. He has more employees working on the fun of his website than he does the making of his beer. And it works. Fun saved his company.
• Fun is flexible. Cheap means only one thing – a rock bottom price. Efficient means fast. But fun means many things to many different people. When we ask business to provide fun, we may expect any number of responses. It may take the form of games, community, entertainment, prizes. Fun is not as narrow a mandate as cheap and efficient.
• Fun is engaging. In today’s busy Internet environment, there is much to distract your customer from your site. Fun provides the glue that will hold your customer in place. Fun is engaging. You may try other tactics to prevent churn, but if you provide fun, your customer will prevent churn for you by opting to stay put.

As you make your business plan, find time to create fun. It may be the business strategy that delivers you the most success.

This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Hiroshi Mikitani is the CEO of Rakuten Inc.