Trendsurfing: Robotic vending (The Times)
By David Rowan
Still see vending machines as boxes for hawking Doritos, Marlboro Lights and those, ahem, lubricated latex accessories you’re simply too embarrassed to ask for in Boots? Get hip to the new wave of automated high-tech retailing that is changing the way we buy everything from PlayStations to pizzas. Designed for today’s impatient, want-it-now consumers, today’s internet-enabled vending units take cash, credit cards, even mobile-phone payments in exchange for the latest gadgets, sneakers or DVDs. Tap on to a touch screen, swipe your card, and you can walk away in seconds with a new iPod or mobile phone. Best of all, you need never confront a human salesperson.
The trend, known inside the industry as "robotic vending", is exciting big-brand marketers, as it encourages impulse purchases while also advertising products in prominent locations. Nike has been using vending machines to sell its Joga3 footballs at the Chelsea Piers pitches in New York; Reebok has experimented with boxes that dispense refrigerated trainers. Now the giants of consumer technology are plugging into the machines’ generous per-square-foot margins. America and Japan are as usual a step ahead of Europe, but in today’s global marketplace it won’t be long before shopping malls and airports here catch up.
Sony, for instance, is placing vending machines in malls across the US to sell everything from PSP players to blank DVDs and music CDs. Part of its "Sony Access" push to keep merchandise in consumers’ minds, the roll-out, Sony says, is about boosting the corporate image as well as notching up sales. "The thinking is there are additional purchases that could occur if we can reach customers more effectively," Joe Stinziano, a senior Sony executive, declared last month.
It’s not the only tech company hoping for a robotic boost. Vodafone has begun selling pay-as-you-go phones through QuickPhone kiosks, while Macy’s, the US retail chain, plans to install 180 iPod vending machines across the country by the autumn as a means of bringing "most- wanted merchandise into our stores in a unique new way". A McDonald’s subsidiary called Redbox, meanwhile, is testing DVD-rental kiosks in 550 sites. You choose your film, swipe your credit card, then pay a dollar for every day you keep the DVD.
This all taps into the increasingly depersonalised nature of modern commerce. And you need only look to Japan to understand how adaptable the concept is, with vending machines selling software, pornography, even fresh eggs. Some analysts think that food will be the machines’ killer application. As the technology advances, they claim, we will trade up from buying crisps and drinks to luxury snacks and hot robot-cooked meals. Early entrants into the market include Moobella, whose machines let you mix your own ice-cream flavours in less than a minute, and WonderPizza, which promises a toast-cooked 9in pizza in 90 seconds.
If this trend does have a future, it may lie more in our eternal drive to avoid social embarrassment. A British company called Tabooboo, for instance, is busy installing sex-toy vending machines offering "multi-coloured vibrators" in clubs and shops from Fabric to Selfridges. If your boss spots you buying, you could always explain that you thought the machine served pizzas.
(The Times Magazine, July 15 2006)
Still see vending machines as boxes for hawking Doritos, Marlboro Lights and those, ahem, lubricated latex accessories you’re simply too embarrassed to ask for in Boots? Get hip to the new wave of automated high-tech retailing that is changing the way we buy everything from PlayStations to pizzas. Designed for today’s impatient, want-it-now consumers, today’s internet-enabled vending units take cash, credit cards, even mobile-phone payments in exchange for the latest gadgets, sneakers or DVDs. Tap on to a touch screen, swipe your card, and you can walk away in seconds with a new iPod or mobile phone. Best of all, you need never confront a human salesperson.
The trend, known inside the industry as "robotic vending", is exciting big-brand marketers, as it encourages impulse purchases while also advertising products in prominent locations. Nike has been using vending machines to sell its Joga3 footballs at the Chelsea Piers pitches in New York; Reebok has experimented with boxes that dispense refrigerated trainers. Now the giants of consumer technology are plugging into the machines’ generous per-square-foot margins. America and Japan are as usual a step ahead of Europe, but in today’s global marketplace it won’t be long before shopping malls and airports here catch up.
Sony, for instance, is placing vending machines in malls across the US to sell everything from PSP players to blank DVDs and music CDs. Part of its "Sony Access" push to keep merchandise in consumers’ minds, the roll-out, Sony says, is about boosting the corporate image as well as notching up sales. "The thinking is there are additional purchases that could occur if we can reach customers more effectively," Joe Stinziano, a senior Sony executive, declared last month.
It’s not the only tech company hoping for a robotic boost. Vodafone has begun selling pay-as-you-go phones through QuickPhone kiosks, while Macy’s, the US retail chain, plans to install 180 iPod vending machines across the country by the autumn as a means of bringing "most- wanted merchandise into our stores in a unique new way". A McDonald’s subsidiary called Redbox, meanwhile, is testing DVD-rental kiosks in 550 sites. You choose your film, swipe your credit card, then pay a dollar for every day you keep the DVD.
This all taps into the increasingly depersonalised nature of modern commerce. And you need only look to Japan to understand how adaptable the concept is, with vending machines selling software, pornography, even fresh eggs. Some analysts think that food will be the machines’ killer application. As the technology advances, they claim, we will trade up from buying crisps and drinks to luxury snacks and hot robot-cooked meals. Early entrants into the market include Moobella, whose machines let you mix your own ice-cream flavours in less than a minute, and WonderPizza, which promises a toast-cooked 9in pizza in 90 seconds.
If this trend does have a future, it may lie more in our eternal drive to avoid social embarrassment. A British company called Tabooboo, for instance, is busy installing sex-toy vending machines offering "multi-coloured vibrators" in clubs and shops from Fabric to Selfridges. If your boss spots you buying, you could always explain that you thought the machine served pizzas.
(The Times Magazine, July 15 2006)
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