By George Anderson
A&P and McDonald's are just two of the retail and foodservice companies looking to drive additional customer traffic by placing DVD rental kiosks in their stores.
TNR Entertainment Corp. (The New Release), the nation's largest owner/operator of DVD rental kiosks in grocery outlets, announced yesterday that it had signed an agreement with A&P to place rental kiosks in 30 company stores covering Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
According to a TNR press release, the company's kiosks dispense DVDs to roughly 1 million consumers a month. Individual units store up to 200 DVD titles that are updated on a weekly basis. Rentals cost consumers $1 a day.
McDonald's is also pursuing the DVD rental opportunity but instead of using a third-party to supply and operate kiosks, it has created its own vending unit, Redbox Automated Retail.
To date, The Associated Press reports, the fast food chain has installed hundreds of the Redbox kiosks in restaurant locations covering six states.
While traditional movie rental stores have been struggling, Redbox and others in the kiosk space believe they offer an attractive alternative for consumers and retailers alike.
"We think it's a tremendous opportunity," said Greg Waring, vice president of marketing for Redbox. "We think we're providing a new model for the industry that is going to be difficult for the traditional retailers to compete against."
"We have some very aggressive projections in terms of our growth, led by McDonald's locations," he added. "There's over 13,000 McDonald's restaurants in the U.S. We foresee a day when we're in the vast majority of those."
The company, however, is not just looking to McDonald's for placement of its machines. According to the AP report, Redbox currently has kiosks in 75 grocery stores and it recently signed a deal to place units in 400 Stop & Shop and Giant Food stores.
Moderator's Comment: Do DVD rental kiosks offer retailers the opportunity to drive frequency of consumer visits and additional profits either through the rentals themselves and/or add-on sales made while customers are in the store? Do you see DVD rental kiosks as a smart merchandising and customer service move by retailers?
Teresa Kliner, a customer at a McDonald's in Apple Valley, MN told The Associated Press that she appreciated the restaurant having the DVD rental kiosk.
"With kids, it's easier this way, because they're not running all over the store," she said. Ms. Kliner's daughters were busy playing with Mr. Kliner in tow at the restaurant's indoor playground at the time. - George Anderson - Moderator