Such cashless benefts should be
tested against the loss of sales due to
the unavailability of cash purchases.
Such testing should be initially con-
ducted at "limited" access vending
locations. For example, while a hos-
pital is identifed as a "health facility
location," in reality it is a location
that contains the two basic types
of locations, "limited access" and
"transient." The emergency room is
a transient location while the nurses'
lounge near intensive care is a lim-
ited access location. The nurses all
have smartphones and work 12 hour
shifts with limited breaks. Vending
machines integrated with smart-
phone marketing and payment apps,
as the only option in the nurses'
lounge, would probably increase
vending sales.
Almost all offce buildings and
manufacturing locations are now lim-
ited access locations. All consumers,
students, faculty and administration
at the college and university locations
would be totally engaged with the
smartphone apps.
Micro markets and smartphones
For all practical purposes consum-
ers using micro markets purchase
all their products cashless either by
the credit/debit card option or by a
pre-paid market card. Micro market
operators have already achieved
many of the cashless benefts such as
charging sales tax and bottle deposit
fees separately, price increments in
cents and improved cash fow. How-
ever, the major problem is market-
ing to the micro market consumer.
As Professor Michael Kasavana and
Brad Bachtelle observed in NAMA's
Micro Market Operational Guideline,
operators need to realize there is a
much larger selection of products
that could drive sales with effective
promotion.
Kasavana and Bachtelle state that
a micro market warehouse should
handle more than 500 SKUs to be
effective, substantially more than a
vending warehouse carrying only
about 120 plus SKUs. Marketing
is key to increase same store micro
market sales. Discussions with some
micro markets have indicated that
without such marketing, the sales
seem to decline at locations over time.
(These anecdotal statements should
be subject to rigorous study.)
The micro market companies have
promotions and discounts to market
to consumers. These applications are
based on gaining access to the micro
market consumers' email through the
use of the pre-paid micro market cards.
These applications are limited because
they have no impact on the micro mar-
46 Automatic Merchandiser VendingMarketWatch.com April 2014
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