Why Peloton succeeds: the fundamental motivation perspective

Peloton is a company producing exercise bikes and an accompanying subscription service. The idea is clever: bring the concept of personalized, social training to the user’s living room through classes with a real-time motivational instructor. Rather than plodding through rain and darkness to the local gym with loud music and insufficient equipment, just hop on your bike in the morning and train with a true professional. The uniquely effective ability to motivate exercising has surely contributed to the 25% increase in Peloton’s share price since the October ’19 IPO.

The Peloton is a solid bike, but it does one thing masterfully… it motivates me to use it and work hard at my personal fitness. I could care less if it’s becoming the latest fitness cult. All I care about is my personal health and what gets me results.

from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21374184

What then makes Peloton so special? The social aspect is cool, but why does it work? I suggest it is Peloton’s ability to meaningfully gamify exercising. By gamification I don’t mean the standard “pointsification” of an arbitrary system with leaderboards and elaborate progressbars. While some of those are elements are used by Peloton too, the fundamental success by Peloton is its ability to satisfy the basic psychological needs.

Humans have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and social relatedness. Autonomy refers to one’s aspiration to have control over their choices and actions. Competence refers to one’s need to overcome challenges and feel mastery. Relatedness refers to one’s desire to empathize with other people and feel social connectedness. Satisfying the three results in psychological well-being.

Well-being is a nice intention, but the psychological needs aren’t still linked to success and excellence directly. This is where theory of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation comes in. Extrinsic motivation refers to actions driven by external reward or fear of punishment (e.g. studying for a good grade), whereas intrinsic motivation is inherent to one’s self and wants (e.g. pursuing most hobbies). Satisfying the basic needs can enhance one’s intrinsic motivation, thus making the activity an inherent part of one’s self. This is what the secret sauce of Peloton is! Aspects of the training program have direct link to the needs, and thus the ability to intrinsically motivate:

Autonomy: the user chooses when and how to exercise from the multiple guided classes per day

Competence: classes are incrementally challenging and customized for each customer, thus able to accurately foster competence

Relatedness: the missing ingredient! By incorporating leaderboards (lesser element) and the live instructors (the big thing!) in training, Peloton makes its users feel part of the community

I claim that this is the reason for the success Peloton has experienced. Exercise bikes are not a new invention, but they have never been as well optimized for the user’s individual journey while including the social aspect (Spin classes have tried, but with less technology and convenience). The ability to make the experience individualized and group-cohesive for the user is a mark of well-designed motivational system.

Such a motivationally designed system is an example of meaningful gamification. As an academic field, gamification is still an emerging field without strong frameworks, but the prominent consensus is to employ Self-Determination Theory as the theory-backed basis for developing and evaluating gamified systems. Self-Determination Theory is the theory linking psychological needs and intrinsic motivation closely together. Multiple authors have built partially exploratory frameworks in aid for developing similarly engaging systems, like Nicholson with “A recipe for meaningful gamification” (2015), or van roy and Zaman with Why gamification fails in education and how to make it successful: introducing nine gamification heuristics based on self-determination theory (2017). These should serve as good starting points for those further interested in the topic.