Retail Customer Experience: Does Mobile Render Kiosks Irrelevant?
Predictions and rumors are running rampant about whether retailers will combine kiosk and mobile technology to serve consumers or if mobile will simply replace kiosks.
In fact, Troy Carroll, the CEO of Intava, a provider of interactive retail technology, declared 2010 as "the year the kiosk died" in a recent article published on Retail Customer Experience.
"This was the year retailers' attitudes turned against the kiosk," wrote Mr. Carroll. "Without exception, every retailer I spoke to about traditional kiosks this year met the topic with frowning brows, shaking heads or statements that kiosks simply aren't that interesting. In other words, retailers have moved on."
According to the Digital Screenmedia Association's report, 2011 Self-service Future Trends, more than 75 percent of respondents said that self-service is important, very important or critical to their business plans, while a little more than six percent said self-service was not important at all. Although those numbers look favorable for kiosks, they actually demonstrate a decline in self-service programs compared to a similar survey published in 2007, when more than 85 percent said self-service initiatives were important, very important or critical, and less than four percent said it was not important.
So, do these declines mean kiosks are on their deathbeds?
"I would lay a wager that time will prove that to be an incorrect prediction," said Don Lineburg, vice president of business and operations at Phoenix Kiosk. "Sages and gurus have had a good history of being wrong guessing how technology would impact various parts of our life. Much in the same way that email did not eliminate paper, and, for example, the independent insurance agent and realtor have not been made extinct by online services, kiosks will always have a place to bring the benefits of technology to a public venue."
Francie Mendelsohn, president of Summit Research Associates, expects self-service companies to combine the technologies.
"You need to be realistic and look five years out," she said in the DSA report. "It's going to be a very different landscape. They need to have applications that make sense. Just to say, 'We offer mobile...' Well, what's that going to do for me? What mobile app can I use? So if you can leverage what you've already done on the kiosk and be able to use it on a mobile device, that would be great."
For example, Ms. Mendelsohn said consumers would probably like to rent a Redbox DVD via phones and then pick them up at kiosks.
"I think there are a ton of possible applications that are currently on kiosks," Ms. Mendelsohn said. "Not all of them can be ported, because some of them don't make sense, but I think that would be a good way to go with the flow."