Blog

Forget fuel, Hybrid digital signage kiosks deliver ROI efficiency

September 15, 2011

I'm not making any revolutionary statement by saying the kiosk market is on a healthy and steady growth pattern. Earlier this spring, BCC Research came out with a report that the market for self-service kiosk deployments should continue at a 9.3 clipip through 2015 with an estimated market deployment size of 2.5 million units.

At the same time, the digital signage market appears to be coming out of the lull it experienced in 2008-2009. Global Industry Analysts, Inc. reported last month that its forecasting the digital signage market to reach $13.8 billion by 2017. Interestingly, the report cites kiosk/digital signage hybrids as one of the drivers of that growth.

Hybrids allow for multi-purpose functionality, increasing both the use and effectiveness for the kiosk owner. The digital signage can provide news and entertainment in addition to branding and promotional messaging while the kiosk component can provide transactional functionality such as catalog ordering, loyalty program management, price checking, etc. The dual use allows for both to be operational simultaneously, creating broader impact and stronger ROI.

Zebra partner Lo-K Systems, a premier integrator providing kiosks with resource locating, path-finding, and other self-service functionality, has two newer hybrid offerings to address this growing trend. From the full-function Nomad to the more space-conscious Express, Lo-K's DS-Kiosk solutions deliver a lower cost of ownership by offering the operator the ability to change configurations post deployment in addition to providing the dual functionality of digital signage and kiosk functionality.

As Self-Service World recently reported, Macy's and Bloomingdales are testing self-service and digital signage applications in their stores as a way provide customers with additional product information and assistance as well as to mirror shoppers' online experience. While larger retailers have the larger budgets to fund these types of large deployments, hybrid solutions offer small and medium sized retailers the ability to provide the same shopping experiences to their customers.