Photo market not the only one developing bright for kiosks

A friend in Australia recently wrote to keep in touch and find out what was happening in the U.S. kiosk market.

"Apart from the new photo kiosk market, what new kiosk apps are emerging," he asked in the letter. "I'm interested whether the market in the U.S. has surpassed the POP apps for retail. Let me know your thoughts on emerging markets. Best regards, Stocky."

My friend certainly had the photo kiosk pegged right as a hot emerging market. I attended the Oct. 7-8 Kiosk Show in Boston, where about a third of the exhibitors demonstrated photo-related applications. What's interesting, however, is that the approach of each vendor seemed a bit different from the others.

While big players like Kodak and Fuji will fight it out placing kiosks in big box retailers and traditional photo processors like drug stores, there is a whole range of new offerings being directed at smaller niche placements. These include placing kiosks in smaller mom-and-pop stores; providing a turnkey solution for places like amusement parks, cruise ships and hotel lobbies; and the continuing expansion of concepts regarding how the kiosks will work. One enhancement now possible, for example, is the ability of a consumer to store photo media in a central data base and print on-demand at any connected kiosk.

To understand the newly emerging apps in retail, one needs to think about the total shopping experience. Near-term we will see more shopping assistants: Cart-mounted kiosks that contain your shopping list will direct you to your selections and even suggest items that you may have forgotten based on your past shopping history. Stores will feature advancements like electronic shelf-labeling, intelligent scales, personal shopping assistants, multimedia digital displays and RFID-tagged items.

The technology will speed check-out by replacing the individual scanning of items with an ID process that recognizes them merely by their presence, and then simply reaching into your pre-selected account and transferring the appropriate funds to the store. Retailers will need fewer items, and shelves will have fewer items out of stock as buying habits are more immediately available to managers and suppliers.

Venturing into vending and beyond

Kiosks are also crossing into traditional vending markets, with most of the dispensed items being high-tech in nature. Starbucks is deploying kiosks that burn music CDs, and McDonald's is testing ones that rent DVDs. While the technology to burn music at a kiosk has been around, the thorny copyright details are just now being ironed out. Once they are, we will see a bull market for the devices. While machines can distribute pre-burned DVDs, the technology has yet to emerge (though it likely will sooner than later) that custom creates a disc within the time the average consumer would be willing to wait for it.

Biometric technology is making kiosks practical for rapid identification of frequent travelers. The US-VISIT system being deployed at border crossings allows people to bypass the traditional interview process. The technology is also showing up on kiosks that rent lockers and tie you into a debit account for payment processing at supermarkets.

Ticketing systems have achieved great success, and airport systems are now part of our culture. The kiosk ticketing concept is being extended to sports parks and other ticketed venues for will-call and onsite ticket sales, which have the potential to be a much larger market than the airlines.

Retailers like Wal-Mart are also deploying HR job application kiosks. Whether the primary motivation is reduction of legal exposure or improvement in the quality of applicants they get as a result of having the ability to check national data bases, these systems are gaining rapid acceptance, with the retailer plugging in more than 7,000 in the past year.

It may come as a surprise to some, but Wal-Mart now is probably one of the largest kiosk deployers in the world. When someone asks me if I can point to any successful programs, I'm eager to tell them about Wal-Mart. With competing photo kiosks from Kodak and Fuji, HR kiosks, cell phone kiosks, tire and battery kiosks, gift registry kiosks, custom cake-decorating kiosks, deli-ordering systems and probably a few more I haven't mentioned, the number of systems the chain operates is approaching 30,000.

Finally, another rapidly emerging market is quick-serve restaurants (QSRs), where kiosks take orders and payment for food. While these systems have been tried before, the new technology has a much more sophisticated customer interface and processes the transaction at the speed of traditional assisted order taking. With the scarcity of labor in some areas and the importance of cutting down on till shrinkage, the systems are now being considered by virtually every QSR, and many have already piloted systems, including McDonalds, Subway and Burger King.

So, the answer to my friend Stocky is this: There have been huge strides made since the early days when kiosks were POP displays, and many more are just now on the horizon.

Why use this column to address the response to Stocky? As I was writing the response, it struck me that nearly all of the companies I was referring to are members of Kiosks.org Association, and I felt pride that our membership had so much influence on the industry. Congratulations on achieving so much in such a short period.

If you'd like to join the ranks of the companies that have done great things in this industry, contact Diana at dianas@kiosks.org or me at gregs@kiosks.org.