It’s rarely a straight path from concept to final deployment. Innovation requires a fair amount of flexibility. “More often than not, the business plan that you start out with is not the plan that you will end up with,” said Gregg Kaplan, COO and President of Coinstar, and this year’s keynote speaker at the 2009 KioskCom Self Service Expo and The Digital Signage Show.
Coinstar is one of the great success stories in the self-service space. Coinstar broadened its product line last February with the acquisition of Redbox, a DVD movie kiosk network. The acquisition added more than 12,000 automated retail locations to their coin-counting kiosk footprint.
Coinstar has developed strong consumer and retail relationships that have propelled its growth. By the end of this year Coinstar’s network of automated retail systems will grow to 20,000 Redbox locations, and more than 19,000 coin-counting machines across the US.
Mr. Kaplan shared some of the lessons he learned about successful self-service deployment. You need to simplify the value proposition otherwise you run the risk that consumers won’t get it. . “Keep it simple. Can you explain the concept in one sentence?” asked Mr. Kaplan.
Your offer needs to be compelling enough to convince consumers to change their normal pattern of behavior. You need to offer consumers real value and differentiate your concept from everything in the market.
You should be wary of developing concepts that rely to heavily on buzzwords to sell the idea. “For example, ‘It’s cool’ can often mean that there’s not a real compelling offer—cool concepts are often just a distraction,” said Mr. Kaplan. Other marketing buzzwords to watch out for are “we’re brand building.” If your kiosk concept is a brand-building exercise, then there may not be a solid business model to start with.
It’s also important to consider how consumers will interact with your system. The user interface needs to be simple. You don’t want it to feel like the cockpit of an airplane. For example, the Redbox interface basically consists of 3 buttons.
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