Automatic Merchandiser serves the business management, marketing, technology and product information needs of its readers including vending operators, coffee service operators, product brokers, and product and equipment distributors in print.
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S T R A TE G I C TH I N K I NG Are you ready for the new 4 Cs? Connect, Communicate, Customize, Cashless By Paul Schlossberg, Contributing Editor Interactive connectivity and digital media are changing the way people shop for everything, everywhere. Vending, OCS and onsite retail have to be where the action is. L ook back 50 years and the vending business was described as the 4 Cs. That's coffee, cola, candy and cigarettes. Today we live in a new world of technology and instant communications. We are entering a new era for our industry. The new 4 Cs are connect, communicate, customize and cashless. The challenge for vending, OCS and onsite foodservice operators is how effective we will be in this new 4 Cs world. How quickly will we adapt to these new standards? We saw dramatic evidence of how retail channels are chang- ing at the 2012 National Retail Federation (NRF) Show in New York City in January. Paco Underhill, founder and president of Envirosell, a retail consulting fi rm, was a featured speaker. He said, "The way people shop will change more in the next fi ve years than it has changed in the past 100 years." Those of us in vending, OCS and onsite foodservice run retail stores. We should be getting ready for even more change in how we sell, what we sell and where we sell. Stop and think for a moment how much change we've seen in how we communicate with one another. And consider how quickly and easily we can access 12 Automatic Merchandiser VendingMarketWatch.com May 2012 information about where we go to buy something or how to get there. The iPhone was fi rst introduced on Jan. 9, 2007. In December 2011, over half of all Americans had a smart phone — whether it was an iPhone or an Android phone. How did we ever exist before we had these amaz- ing, addictive devices? In the next two years, Apple is expected to sell 65.6 million iPads, according to analyst Michael Walkley of Canaccord Genuity, the global investment bank. That will mean more than 100 million iPads sold by the end of 2012. The iPad was introduced in January 2010. of Look at today's new innovations We have seen a wave of excep- tional new vending equipment coming on the market in recent years. The Coca-Cola Interac- tive Vending Machine. The Kraft diji-touch candy/snack machine. The Pepsi Social Vending Machine. There are self-serve ordering kiosks for foodservice operations. The self-service markets where payment kiosks and scanners replace the vending machines. The arrival of single-cup brewing equipment and an increas- ing number of branded product options has been a huge growth driver for OCS operators. C ONT INUED ▶