Dick Coffee attended 781 consecutive University of Alabama football games. Meg Roh surfed through illness, storms and nightfall to maintain a seven-year daily surfing streak. Jon Sutherland ran at least 1 mile every day for over 52 years.
An activity streak has the power to compel behavior, and marketers have taken note. Marketing researchers Jackie Silverman and Alixandra Barasch recently documented 101 unique instances, including Snapchat, Candy Crush Saga, Wordle and the Duolingo language learning platform, of apps that have incorporated streaks into their architecture by tracking the number of consecutive days users complete a task. There are even apps dedicated solely to tracking streaks.
One user’s Wordle streak of more than a month’s worth of wins. (Credit: Screenshot from Wordle on New York Times)
Screenshot from Wordle on New York Times
What is it about streaks that makes them so compelling? I’m interested in consumer behavior and decision-making. For ...
