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 The National Automatic Mer- chandising Association (NAMA) presented the highlights from its very important market research study at the 2011 OneShow. The most important highlight was that young people like vending. One of the key reasons is that they prefer to deal with a machine rather than deal with people when they are shopping. They like the fact that it is fast, accurate and self-service. Let me tell you what I learned at the NRF Show in New York City. It relates directly to how shopping will change and what we must do to win the next generation of shoppers. All of this sets up the possibility of an excel- lent future for us, if we capitalize on it with the most appropriate solutions. What was new at the NRF Show? In a word, it was vending. At the Intel booth, there was the new Kraft Jell-O sampling vend- ing machine. Kraft has deployed these machines at supermarkets to offer samples of new products. The machine is "smart." It has facial recognition capabilities and can recognize a child versus an adult. When sampling food products at retail stores, the demonstrators can- not offer a sample to a child unless the parent permits it fi rst. So the machine can stop a child from get- ting a sample. What was interesting was that Intel then changed the front panel to demonstrate the diji-touch candy/ snack machine. They showed how it functions and how shoppers can interact with it. They also described how operators can set the screen planogram to maximize the shop- ping experience. Interactive video changes shopping Also at the Intel booth was the new Adidas shopping wall. Rather than simply put shoes on display, there is an interactive, high-resolution image of each shoe. Shoppers can use the 14 4 C's 1960 of touchscreen to "pull out" the shoe, rotate it any direction, get informa- tion about the shoe, learn which sizes are available in the store and even request that a store associate come over. That saves time for the shopper and for the store staff. And there is no need for a shoe on the wall for shoppers to see. "Catch 'Em and Keep 'Em: Revi- talizing the Store in a Cross-Channel World" was the title of a presenta- tion at the NRF show made by a team from Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group. Their premise was that there is an entirely new level of consumer shopping behavior — it's called cross channel shopping. Cisco learned that consumers are engaging heavily in cross-chan- nel shopping and with a greater per- centage of shopping going online. That is having a big impact on physical store retailing; e.g., fewer people in the stores, using the stores as showrooms and then price shop- ping and fi nishing the purchases at Amazon.com. So, how can physical store retailers keep and convert consumers in their stores? By providing a more engag- ing experience and providing ways to shop cross-channel in the store. This Automatic Merchandiser VendingMarketWatch.com May 2012 lesson applies to our industry — vend- ing, OCS and onsite foodservice. Cisco calls it the "mashop." They described it as a "mashing up physi- cal retailing with the best…online content revitalizes stores by creating compelling 'mashop' experiences that are not possible (in) either channel alone." From this perspective, Cisco cre- ated and then tested fi ve "mashop" concepts in the U.S. and U.K. This research was about bringing the virtual experience into the store. "Catch 'em," according to Cisco, is about making shoppers aware and engaging them. "Keep 'em" relates to getting shoppers to the store and then maximizing what we sell them when they're in the store. My recent articles in Automatic Merchandiser and presentations at NAMA have emphasized that we must do a much better job of com- municating with the shoppers at the sites we serve. Our future demands that vending, onsite foodservice and OCS operators learn and master how to communicate with current and potential shoppers using social media. Digital media allows target marketing In the Cisco concept tests, one of the primary strategies was to deploy a "product viewer." This was a large, interactive screen to provide product information, views of the product, directions and more. Their research identifi ed how to target specifi c strategies to enhance appeal to different demographic groups. As you might expect, there were different approaches with more (or less) appeal to shoppers; men versus women or younger versus older. Don't forget that the fi rst gen- eration of these applications have already been shown at the NAMA OneShow. Have you seen the Kraft diji-touch snack vending machine, C ONT INUED ▶ cigarettes candy cola coffee