This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine, Aug 2007.
It's a sweltering, hot summer in many parts of the world, and the self-service industry itself is sizzling. Dozens of kiosks are ablaze with better features, innovative peripherals and easier-to-use interfaces.But several stand out as superstars.
After a careful analysis of the most-popular kiosks on the Internet, Self-Service World has determined the 10 kiosks with the most star power. That short list was given to our readers, who ranked them, choosing the top kiosk.
So, without further ado ...
No. 1: redbox DVD Rental
Receiving more than 50 percent of readers' votes, nothing is hotter than redbox DVD kiosks. Located at thousands of McDonald's restaurants and in groceries around the United States, redbox is the nation's leader in self-service DVD rentals, growing from 93,000 rentals in 2003 to more than 21 million in 2006. It is on pace to reach 40 million rentals this year.
In 2002, redbox deployed its first kiosk, in Washington, D.C. The kiosk rollout started slowly and was deliberately paced, said Greg Waring, redbox's vice president of marketing.
"We wanted to spend a couple of years on our business model and really home in on the needs of our consumers," Waring said.
In 2004, redbox deployed its rental kiosks at Denver-area McDonald's restaurants. Its goal was to reach the 18-35 demographic and parents with young children. Redbox also made sure its machines were stocked with the latest new releases, which were kept in its kiosks for up to four months. The larger deployment was a success.
"They were emptying the machines on Friday and Saturday nights," Waring said.
With that triumphant deployment, redbox installed kiosks in McDonald's in other markets. It also struck up partnerships with grocery chains. Currently, redbox has 4,200 locations -- one-third of those in McDonald's and two-thirds in groceries such as Albertsons, Giant Food Stores and Harris Teeter.
 |
| Redbox is the nation's leader in DVD rentals, expecting to reach 40 million rentals in 2007. |
Waring credits the growing acceptance of automated technology as a reason for redbox's success.
"Plus, we're just an unbeatable value," he said.
Fast growth can have its pitfalls, but those issues have not seemed to affect redbox. With newer DVD technology such as Blu-ray and on-demand burning on the way, Waring said, the company will continue to adjust its business model to meet the needs of the current customer base.
"When the technology does change, it will only make redbox stronger," he said. "But right now, there is nothing available or on the immediate horizon that matches the convenience or value of what redbox offers now."
No. 2: NCR EasyPoint
NCR has been a power player in the self-service industry for the past few years with dozens of kiosk solutions. But the NCR EasyPoint kiosk stands out. With more than 50,000 deployments at retail giants such as Wal-Mart, Sears and Macy's, the EasyPoint has been tested and proven in heavy traffic environments.
In all its experience with kiosk deployments, NCR learned the thing most important to a successful deployment is one most people take for granted.
"The key for any kiosk is that it must always work," said Peter Charpentier, NCR's director of product management.
The reliability of the product has been its strength. In fact, many of the first models NCR came out with in 1999 still are in operation.
"It's been a proven and reliable product all these years," Charpentier said.
The EasyPoint, one of the oldest point-of-decision kiosks, was extremely innovative when it hit the market, Charpentier said.
"This was a product that didn't have to be on a pedestal or enclosure; it could be anywhere," he said. "It wasn't relegated to a PC in a box."
No. 3: IBM Anyplace
A flexible kiosk with a broad reach -- that was IBM's goal when it designed the Anyplace kiosk. Now, with tens of thousands of them in deployment, it's safe to say it is a winner, said Norma Wolcott, IBM's business executive for self-service solutions.
| A Star is Born Good management makes superstars. Where would Elvis be without Col. Tom Parker? Or the Beatles without Brian Epstein? Or Milli Vanilli without Frank Farian? To crown the hottest kiosk deployment, the editorial management team at Self-Service World met earlier this year to come up with a comprehensive list of successful kiosks in deployment. Those 55 deployments were analyzed to determine the 10 most-popular kiosks on the Web. The editorial staff then developed a survey that asked readers of Self-Service World to rank those deployments in order to determine the hottest kiosk. After two weeks, our staff tallied the votes to reveal the winner. |
IBM's Anyplace kiosk is the most-deployed retail kiosk on the market. And there is substantial growth in the healthcare, hotel and airline industries, Wolcott said. The kiosks are used as time clocks, informational kiosks and ordering stations.
The "sleek look and feel" is the No. 1 reason customers like the Anyplace, Wolcott said. "It's easy to the eye, simple and not difficult to use."
IBM has teamed with hundreds of partners worldwide to customize the kiosk to meet its customers' needs. And the results have been astonishing.
"We are very pleased and invest heavily in self-service," Wolcott said. "We see success in the market through our partners and through the success of our sales."
No. 4: Coinstar Coins to Cash
Coinstar placed its first coin-counting kiosks in four San Francisco Bay-area supermarkets in 1992. Today, Coinstar Coins to Cash kiosks can be found in more than 13,000 stores -- including supermarkets, drug stores, mass merchants, financial institutions, convenience stores and restaurants -- across the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Canada.
To date, Coinstar's coin-counting machines have processed 370 million transactions and more than $13 billion in change.
"Coinstar has grown beyond what our founder even imagined a decade-and-a-half ago when he invented self-service coin counting," said Dave Cole, Coinstar's chief executive officer. "Today, not only is Coinstar the top brand in consumer coin counting, but we've expanded to multiple lines of business, serving countries around the world."
Indeed, Coinstar's ventures have grown to include prepaid, gift cards and some financial services as well.
With $132.3 million in revenue in the first four months of 2007, Coinstar shows no signs of slowing down.
No. 5: Kodak Picture Maker
With the advent of its Picture Maker kiosk in 1993, Kodak introduced the world to the photo-finishing kiosk. Fourteen years later, the kiosk is the No. 1 installed photo kiosk, with more than 85,000 deployed worldwide.
The reason is high quality, said John Witzel, worldwide market development line manager.
"The Kodak brand has stood for quality, and the picture kiosk is an extension of that," he said.
Kodak offers many variants of the Picture Maker in mass-merchandising, food, craft and photo-specialty stores.
Since it entered the photo-finishing market, Kodak has seen it evolve from print-to-print copying to the enlargement and manipulation of digital pictures. Kodak also is keeping up to date with kiosk technologies involving Bluetooth, the Internet and mobile devices.
Despite a dominant hold on the U.S. market, Kodak plans to continue growing its presence worldwide as digital photography takes hold overseas.
One of the ways Kodak has been able to improve each year is by continuing to research what customers want, Witzel said, and in that area there always is more the company can do.
No. 6: Starbucks Hear Music kiosk
The Starbucks Hear Music kiosk may not be deployed in hundreds of locations, but the few of them out there have made an impact with Starbuck's regular customers.
The Hear Music kiosks offer customers the opportunity to burn personalized CDs from an extensive digital inventory. The kiosks' library has more than one million music tracks from 15,000 CDs.
Starbucks initially rolled out kiosks in 45 coffeehouses in 2004, but according to news reports, were subsequently removed from many stores because they failed to produce revenue.
Starbucks did not return phone calls for comment, but many experts suggest the ubiquity of iTunes and other Internet music services contributed to the kiosks' lackluster reception.
However lightly used, the kiosks were excellent ambassadors for self-service, as their presence in this list affirms.
No. 7: Polo Ralph Lauren's interactive window
Sauntering down Chicago's Michigan Avenue is more than a stroll for shopping junkies. Rather, it's a walk in and out of some of the most popular fashion shops in the world. But at one clothing retailer in particular, customers don't have to enter the store to shop.
 |
| Polo Ralph Lauren's window-shopping touchscreen enables customers to shop from the store 24/7. |
This innovative kiosk was given the best-of-competition award at this year's Self Service Expo in Las Vegas.
The window-shopping touchscreen also has been deployed at Polo Ralph Lauren's New York and Aspen stores. Another installation, in London, coincided with the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
So far, the touchscreens are installed for limited periods only. Polo Ralph Lauren has not said whether they will become permanent fixtures.
No. 8: DVDPlay DVD kiosk
Builder of the first automated DVD rental machine, DVDPlay is staking a claim in the highly competitive DVD rental market. Founded in 1999, the company first deployed its DVD rental kiosks at Safeway grocery stores. Those kiosks now are deployed in other grocery chains, quick-service restaurants and even military bases. Overall, roughly 1,000 are in the field.
DVDPlay's strategy is based on four principles, said Melissa Moore, the company's senior executive vice president. They are creating an easy user interface, putting the kiosks in convenient locations, giving the customers value and keeping the kiosks stocked with new releases. With the continuing execution of these strategies, Moore said, she believes DVDPlay can deploy up to 3,000 kiosks by 2008. Plans are to reach 10,000 eventually.
Right now, the only limitation to deploying more kiosks is time.
"We can't produce these machines fast enough," Moore said.
No. 9: Fujifilm GetPix
Thanks to the growth of digital photography and the public's acceptance, photo-finishing kiosks are more successful than ever. Fujifilm's kiosks have been a part of this growth since 2001, when they were placed next to its minilabs.
Fujifilm's latest line of digital photo kiosks, the GetPix photo center, was released in 2005. Several thousand units now are in mass-merchandising stores, groceries and drug stores, said Jim Riekert, Fujifilm's director of marketing in the kiosks and imaging division.
One of GetPix's unique features allows customers to price shop from it, Riekert said. Customers can have their pictures immediately, processed onsite at the minilab, or sent overnight to a processing center. The price is proportionate to the level of convenience.
GetPix is Bluetooth compatible, enabling users to download images and order pictures from their mobile phones and pick them up at a local kiosk. But most users do it the new old-fashioned way.
"Consumers are more comfortable with putting a (digital memory) card into a kiosk, editing it, getting their pictures and then taking them home, all without handing anything over to someone," Riekert said.
No. 10: Wincor Nixdorf Beetle
Perhaps the oldest point-of-sale kiosk solution hails from Germany. The Wincor Nixdorf Beetle was created in 1992 and was the first kiosk deployers could customize with their choice of applications and software.
"We opened the market to free choice," Nolte said.
The Beetle now is in its fifth-generation, with more than one million Beetle kiosks deployed. Most of the kiosks are used for POS transactions, although some are used as informational kiosks.
Currently, the greatest share of Beetle shipments is to Europe and Asia, though Wincor Nixdorf soon plans to launch a marketing campaign in the United States.
"That will definitely improve our presence in the United States," Nolte said.
Wincor Nixdorf has continued to refine the Beetle since its introduction. One of its strengths is its ability to support almost any computer operating system and to operate in "all sorts of scalable, modern open architecture," Nolte said. The product line has been a successful one for the company.
"The Beetle name will be kept for a long time," he said.
