Shopper Culture

Vending recycled

We have a fantastic emporium near our offices that is a veritable treasure trove of design goodies.  Called Composition, they are our local source of Moleskin notebooks and retail all sorts of interesting bags, books, jewellery, gadgets, household and office goods.  They also do a lot with products made with recycled materials, and they currently have a recycled vending machine that is carrying products made from recycled materials.  You drop a nickel in the slot to open the door of your choice and look at the product - want to see another one? Drop another nickel in the slot.

It's a great use of an old machine and is a really engaging and interesting way to display unexpected products.  We love the sense of discovery and adventure they present as a brand to their customers, and how that makes us all want to go back in to see what we might discover this time.  There are lessons for big brands here on how to present and engage with their audience in interesting ways.  What could your brand do to reuse a discarded something as part of its story?  Or bring a greater sense of discovery to what it offers to its audience?

Sony vending and airport convenience

This is neat.  As seen at Dallas Fort Worth airport.

It is one of a series of vending machines that Sony has been testing (since 2006) that brings the different parts of it's organisation together in retail. Operating under the name "Sony Access" the vending machines showcase and sell multiple formats of Sony recordable media, batteries, headphones, Walkman MP3 players and CD players, Sony digital cameras, Sony Pictures DVDs and UMD videos, Sony Music CDs, Vaio PC accessories and PlayStation games and PSP players.

The vending machines are placed well. This machine pictured was in a high traffic area in the airport and very visable and there is no cannibalization from other Sony channels (at least not in Dallas airport).

While I was sitting there many people walking by stopped to have a look.  It is an interesting concept, attractive concept and clearly great at raising awareness of, and generating interest in, the brand and its offerings - but I didn't see anyone buy anything.

This got me wondering. Given the high end nature of some of the products available, would shoppers want to see and touch the product before they buy?  Will consumers see vending of such products in a similar light as the Internet where holding the product before purchase is less important?  Does this just bring another level of convenience to a captive audience with time to kill?  Or appeal only to a specific, confident segment (likely to be in an airport)? Does the brand just accept the trade off between brand awareness and actual sales?

And on the theme of convenience, just around the corner was a neat consumer service. Here you can rent a laptop by the hour.  Just in case you have forgotten yours!  It is part of a charging station for phones, PDAs and laptops. So I guess you could charge your machine, rent another, work on that important document, then port it over to your machine.  You can also print out what you create.  Only thing is, surely if you have your own laptop you can use it while it is charging - or is that just a mac thing?  Again, it wasn't doing brisk business and all the available laptops were in the machine.

Just need to find out how the Sony Access concept is performing.

Kroger's Shop24 Vending Experiment

Recently in Columbus, OH the Kroger company installed a giant hybrid convenience store / vending machine next to its gas pumps.

Local TV station NBC-4 reported on it, saying:

When operational, the machines will provide everything from drinks to pain relievers. In all, more than 150 products will be available at the so-called automated convenience stores.

The machines will accept credit cards, coins and cash.

"Product falls into a soft basket. Basket goes into a delivery bin, drops it in and it comes out the front," said Tom Riske, an installer.

The concept is from a company called Shop24 which is based in Belgium and has installed similar machines throughout Europe. 

For a while now there has been tension between the grocery and c-store channels, with each creeping toward the other.  In this move Kroger is dipping its toe in more automation territory.  First, along with other grocery chains, they have given shoppers the self-checkout option.  Now they are looking at a store-without-a-store.  It will be interesting to see how this catches on.  I couldn't find any pictures of the one in Columbus but here's a picture from a similar Shop24 unit attached to a Shell station in Portugal.
One of the interesting things about this concept is how people use it.  It appears to follow a purchase pattern similar to that of a standard convenience store.  On their website Shop24 outlines the highest selling Europesn items and typical dayparts for each, along with shopper needs.  It shows the breadth of occastions for this type of retail channel.  It all raises a small but significant question:  What is this channel called?  Un-manned C-Store or SuperVending?  I imagine it will live under the Vending banner.  And although it can't compare to the vending jungle that is at play in Japan, it's a pretty interesting development for us stateside.