In the past, the majority of vending sales focused on the “Four Cs” — coke, candy, coffee, and cigarettes. Today, generations Y and Z also known as the millennial and social generations, respectively those born between 1977- present, can interact with the vending machine as a full-service retail fulfillment experience as opposed to the impulse buy of yesteryear. In today’s tech savvy world, vending machines are no longer just for the Four Cs — they now offer a full range of products and services. Today’s mobile consumers are purchasing media, electronics, venue tickets, as well as paying bills, and even paying for parking through a combination of vending and mobile devices.
According to the Vending Times 2012 annual report, the presence of traditional Four Cs vending machines decreased from 185,000 locations between 2007 and 2012, and sales from traditional vending machines sank more than 14% to $49.2 billion in the same period. The major exception to this rule has been highly specific retail opportunities such as DVDs, e-cigarettes, electronics, and luxury goods. Those brands and retailers who have land grabbed high traffic, well-placed automated retail kiosks have seen incredible success, including increased profit and market presence. This sector has added over 40,000 of “new era” retail vending machines from 2009 to present.
According to Best Buy spokesperson, Jeremy Baier, over the past 9 months Best Buy Inc. has installed product kiosks in airports, hotels, and college campuses. The benefits of Best Buy kiosk locations include: no employee costs, a fraction of the overhead, low investor costs, increased brand recognition due to high traffic placement, the ability to address the consumer’s desire for instant gratification, and of course, maximum profits. Best Buy kiosk locations outperformed their big box store locations by an estimated 2,900% given per unit sold.
Other benefits reported by luxury brands and retailers from CoinStar to Xbox are:
In our electronically, interconnected world the value on human interaction seems less of a consumer need. The value is increasingly being placed on the overall customer experience. According to a 2013 survey by Motorola, over 50% of consumers believe they are better informed than the sales associate and therefore, are becoming increasingly comfortable with sales transactions that do not include human interface. This is extremely evident in the world of ecommerce (online and mobile) and appears to be the trend in this micro-retailing environment as well.
In a semi-downturned economy it is difficult and expensive for brands and retailers to grow awareness and maintain a strong ROI while having to maintain their limiting physical space and competing with pure onlie retailers like Amazon. The answer may just be the micro-boutique, which will help retailers gain a competitive edge, without the high cost of maintaining a physical presence.
Sources: Industry Interviews, Wikipedia, National Retail Federation, The Wall Street Journal, Zoom PR, Red Box Annual Report, Block Buster PR, Best Buy PR, and American Retailer
So, as you may have noticed the end of the failed to materialize according to the predications of one Harold Camping. This stunned, actually no one except, Harold Camping and a few thousand believers. As for myself, I believe I can speak for most that I’m happy that the apocalypse did not come to pass, especially since I spent May 21st 2011, rapture eve, completing my honey do list. Though in retrospect, by bucket list for my last day on may most likely preclude me from a happy entry to the great beyond without a lot of explanation. Not surprisingly, a few judgment day marketers did cash in.
So here is my top ten list of Judgment Day Marketers, who cashed in on pre-rapture dollars, May 21st on “End of the World” hype?
1. Camping’s Family Radio Network and associated media networks – for raising an estimated $100 million dollars in donations from true believers, as the unofficial agency of record, in promoting judgment day. Here’s an idea, pick another date… say October 21st 2011, and bank another few million.
Online and social media is drastically changing the fashion industry and the way consumers interact with fashion brands. Let’s meet the people that lead the fashion revolution online – fashion bloggers, new media publishers, entrepreneurs, industry insiders, fashion PR reps, and web savvy trendsetters.
Meet the leaders of marketing luxury, fashion, music, cosmetics, media, and other fashionably must haves.
This Event will Be Streamed Live from the Fabulous W Downtown.
John Says, "for the GPad Life marketing strategy, we had to just reinvent all the rules of consumer electronics marketing, because they just did not fit into our timeline".
Have you ever looked in the mirror and said, what in the hell was I thinking? It all started when I had the pleasure of having a front row seat to a private session of Google, Apple, RIM, and a few other heavy weights talk about the future of developing applications (APPS) for smart phones at an Emory’s Wireless Forum event. In sitting on the first row I noticed a lot of iPads, so I had to ask Google, "I understand this session is about app development, but we should also have a question about supporting devices. So my question is Mr. Google (I rather not call him the Director of App Development for all Things Android or you’ll know who he is) when are you going to get man up to Apple and start developing a tablet friendly OS, before Apple gains any more market share. This is where I get into trouble without an entourage, because I am too encouraged to speak my mind without filters. Google looked at Apple, Apple Looked at Google, and Mr. Google answered it’s something we are discussing, and we have partners launching with our 2.1 and 2.2 OS. Another panel member stated that there is only one other competitor the Samsung Galaxy 7’ table hitting shelves Christmas. So I did a little research as well, and found one other minor player, which is a no name Chinese brand in Kmart which if anyone buys me one, please leave the gift receipt.
Anyway, to make a short blog post longer, I saw first the opportunity, as a Media ROI Evangelist, to help bridge the market between East and West, but when I talked to several Chinese manufactures they really only wanted to sell product, not build a brand. I felt their strategy a little shortsighted, since I see electronics as more of a commodity, especially in China.Then the ahha moment hit, I have launch dozens of brands into the marketplace, for a lot less than big brands spend. Plus, I have a fairly good rolodex of rainmakers that could compensate in areas which I was weak. To seal the deal, comes my long time friend, Bob who said, wow, very complex; you need at least $20-50+ million to launch out a brand to compete against those guys. I said naaaa, blah, blah, 3 minutes later we just bet a dollar that I could not create a competing national brand in 6 weeks.
Then it happened, I drank the Kool-aid, and became the first Gpad Life Evangelist. The more I researched the marketplace, the more a really saw a need for the market to change. If you LISTEN to what your consumers are telling you their needs, it is easy to meet their demands by… well I don't know, building the product they want, at the cost everyone can afford. Rumor has it that the first release of the GPad may even have a camera and 2x the memory than the iPad, and is bigger than the Samsung Galaxy, but these are only unsubstantiated rumors. 🙂
Anyway Bob… you will owe me a dollar this week, and for all of you buying a GPad Life this Christmas and beyond, be vocal, tell us what you want, tell your friends, rant, rave, or make fun of us. At the end of the day, all reviews are good reviews, because your helping us build a better product.
If anyone would like to know the details of what we have actually done (including very little sleep) for Project GPad aka GPad Life.. heres our first 5 weeks…..
1) Did all of the legal corporate crap… Corporate filings, CPA, Bank acct, etc
2) Used digital listing and influencer interviews concerning the iPad and people potentially looking for a second trusted source
3) Found several factories producing a better product than Apple (practiced my Chinese)
4) Created the brand GPAD, which I actually did previously for a prospective client, but he never paid me, good news is that I own the trademark.
5) Build a website, ecommerce store (launching in T-96 h)
6) Integrated the ecommerce engine into a fulfillment house
7) Established Logistics and reverse logistics protocols
8) Got cap less merchant account a great rate
9) Created Branding materials
10) Created a media partnerships launching on Radio, TV, Print, & more
11) Established call order center
12) Established customer service center (offshore) – I know but to expensive onshore
13) Tomorrow I am pulling in some a few hundred thousand to increase project staff, ad budgets, and overall project revenues.
All this done for A LOT less than most think, we should to make the project profitable for under $250,000 and 4 bodies. By the way, we also have other clients that we managed as well. The secret is let your vendors do the heavy lifting, and pay them on performance, not time. In the end, stuff gets done faster, and it saves you lots of money.
But what happens next? I have no idea. Let’s see if any of these GPAD balls come crashing down around my ears. For the time being, we may actually sell a few thousand pads, and change the way people perceive retail electronics marketing, and potentially creating new competitor to the tablet market by pulling in rapid consumer support and product adoption.
So tune in for the rest of the story as it unfolds. Good news is if we do well, feel free to buy GPad Life for 1 gazillion dollars, or you could always hire my firm Adreka for your next marketing launch 🙂
In a Tech Crunch interview, HP executive, Todd Bradley, estimates that tablets will be a $40 B market that is now in its infancy, within the next few years. Ironically, most major electronics manufactures missed the 2011 holiday season of tablet deployment expect Apple’s IPad that just entered into Walmart distribution hubs for national deployment.
Apple announced that it was ramping up its iPad production with aspirations to produce over 2M iPads per month. This could be seen as a defensive posture for Apple in an attempt to saturate the market in anticipation of Google’s android approach, but in the absence of any competition, I believe there will be the demand. The social rumor mill is a buzz about the Walmart – Apple partnership to include Walmart's “strong recommending” to their electronic's vendors NOT produce tablet computing platforms that would compete against the iPad, thus greatly decreasing the potential for other thin clients in entering the market prior to the holiday rush according to one consumer electronics importer wishing not to be identified.
What is gold for tablet manufactures is poison for any manufacture in the PC space as thin clients may soon replace the laptop, or even desktop. But given processing speed, battery life, applications, and even limitations in conductivity I wouldn’t throw away your desktops until next year.
My predictions for this Christmas season expect to see a lot of independents push into the marketplace. Distribution channels are key for a competitive lockdown in the market place. Those that have product, marketing, and distribution in place prior to the November 15th holiday rush stand to do very well this holiday season.
I am amazed that there are groups of people in a variety of industries that have been sold a bag of false hope in spending a substantial percentage of group hard earned dollars, in the form of feed tariffs, to establish change that ultimately could mean the life of death of their livelihoods.
Just last week, I was asked to investigate marketing a farming co-op to look at ways they could use our technology to act as a catalyst to measure and grow the effectiveness of the tens of millions spent to date. I was excited, given one of the perks of my job is to learn about new industries and business models almost every day. So in preparation, I downloaded an armament of industry reports, digitally listened to social conversations within the industry, investigated their competition, market, etc. I eagerly joined the conference call with the anticipation of walking away as a trivial expert on this type of farming, possessing just enough information and industry lingo to impress my colleagues and hold a technical conversation with my soon, would be clients. I gave my world to the head of the co-op I was just an observer and assured him that I was just hear to observe. I assume my reputation of speaking my mind and screaming at injustices across a board room has preceded my arrival. I believe this to be true as my assistant gave me a 3 minute on the proper usage of our phone mute button.
This was really a bad time for me to make a promise! What I soon discovered that the co-op potentially took millions, without creating any measurable change other than repetitive monthly news papers to the group, showing their work in process at luxury hotels and conventions, and a rebate that was given to the farmers because their profits were eaten away by offshore competition. My personal opinion on the second deliverable is that while it’s always nice to receive a rebate, the shininess of the accomplishment wears off when the rebate is given when the co-op, DID NOT DO THEIR JOB! Moreover, I stayed up all night doing my diligence in preparation for this conference, so that the co-op moderators spent the first 10 minutes talking about weather, followed by a sales pitch, of why the farmers needed to spend more money on planning on how to combat the unification of flavor and lowering the cost of processing their food that may help them shave pennies off of the COGS but will cost them millions to implement, at the cost of an increased market erosion from offshore organizations. DID NOT ANYONE READ THE REASEARCH ON THE COMPETITIVE FORCES RUINNING THEM OUT OF THEIR OWN MARKET, AFTER STEALING THEIR BREED STOCK!
I felt my blood pressure ever increasing and my finger moving ever more towards the mute button. When the call ended, I recapped with some of the co-op members which brought me to my most startling discovery of all! The marketing vendor / lobbyist group were controlling the entire program, which the head of the co-op had a duel ownership stake within. This was further compounded by a second discovery that I could find no record of either organization ever being registered as a lobbyist or donating to any political campaigns of organizations. So flustered, I contacted a few of my lobbyist friends in Washington the other day just to be sure I am not completely off base.
Just food for thought… and a final question… does competitive balls go well with some flava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti? Just a question… all this talk about farming has made me hungry.
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