Unmanned retail sets off a boom in entrepreneurship The historical opportunity of vending machines

Vending machines have been around for a long time, but in China it has been difficult to get out of the tepid embarrassing situation. For more than ten years, vending machines have been in a state of unsatisfactory in the market. In recent years, vending machines have ushered in development opportunities. Micron predicts that China's annual revenue from vending machines will reach 2020 billion yuan in .

I believe that many people who have used vending machines have such an experience, a bottle of drinks priced at 3 yuan, if consumers stuff a 20 yuan banknote, it means to find 17 1 yuan coins, it will not be long before the coins in the machine will run out, Micron believes that this operation method is extremely inefficient and maintenance costs are very high, coupled with the lack of domestic retail experience and lack of channel expansion have become a stumbling block to the development of vending machines.

An important role in
the new retail scene In foreign countries, vending machines are known as "24-hour uninterrupted robots that bring wealth", which do not need to be guarded, sell things by themselves, and collect money by themselves. TechNavio data pointed out that the ratio of vending machines (VEM) and convenience stores in the United States is 30:1, and the expected compound growth rate (CAGR) of vending machines in the United States in 2014~2018 is higher than 54.3%, and the vending machine market in the United States will reach 2021.133 billion US dollars in 4. In Japan, there are nearly 600 million vending machines, with an average of one vending machine for every 20 people.

In comparison, Japan and the United States often have a market capacity of more than 500 million units, while China's vending machines are less than 20,<> units, which are still in their infancy and will usher in a wave of thin development.

Data shows that China's labor costs have risen fivefold in the past 10 years, and in 5, Chinese employee compensation increased by 2016%, ranking first in the world, well above the world average of 8.2%. In addition, overall rents in China increased by 5%. The rise in labor and rental costs in China has compressed the profits of physical stores. Micron believes that this makes vending machines an important role in the new retail scene, and vending machines save rent and labor costs on the one hand; On the other hand, vending machines have attracted more and more attention from brands because they can quickly lay channels and take advantage of the current development of the retail industry.

In Micron's view, online payments have also made vending machines more and more popular. The biggest reason why vending machines were not popularized in China before was that there were many machine failures. Even in the case of small settlements such as the purchase of beverages, banknotes are required, and banknotes are often crumpled directly in clothing pockets, so it often happens that banknotes are stuck in vending machines, and consumers begin to become reluctant to buy drinks through beverage companies. At present, domestic vending machines basically realize the access of WeChat, Alipay and other payment platforms. Consumers can complete self-service transactions by doing a few simple steps through mobile devices. The risk of failure caused by inferior banknotes is reduced, and the risk of cash theft due to the destruction of vending machines is also reduced, which has played a good role in promoting the popularity of vending machines.

According to the China Chain Store and Franchise Association, the number of convenience stores in
China is about 9,30. As mentioned above, against the 1:270 ratio in the United States, the number of vending machines in the country should be 20.6000 million. At present, there are only less than 2020,<> domestic vending machines, and the vending machine market space is huge. According to Micron's forecast, based on the monthly revenue of <>,<> yuan per vending machine, China's annual revenue of vending machines in <> can reach <> billion yuan.

Micron believes that the current intelligence is the development trend of vending machines. Vending machines are no longer simply providing self-service retail services, but will provide high-end technical and service support in the field of intelligent vending services, and realize easy management and operation of mobile terminals through the leading management system of cloud services, so that smart retail terminals can penetrate quickly while achieving a win-win situation between enterprises, franchisees and consumers. As a simple example, vending machines are gradually becoming LBS functional, and consumers can easily find nearby vending machine locations based on location. Merchants can monitor the real-time replenishment of machine inventory through the Internet system, as well as do preference analysis for consumers to further optimize the consumer experience.

The development of
domestic operators, many giants have also acted as a new creative force, through vending machines to lay out their own new retail formats. Wahaha Group established Zongsheng Intelligent Technology Company, claiming to invest 20 billion yuan to enter the vending market. In fact, in recent years, Wahaha has launched several new products, but the market sales are weak, and it has not yet created a new fashion product that young people love. In contrast, Nongfu Spring's newly launched π tea and NFC juice 17.5°, focusing on the young market, marketing is more active, and the performance has been rising.

At present, in the categories of electronic products, daily necessities, and comprehensive shelves, vending machine players have not yet begun to form an echelon. After all, the development of vending machines involves embedded development, IOT technology, data collection, mobile payment and other technologies, and there are very high requirements for the stability of software and hardware systems. Micron believes that with the research and development of vending systems based on cloud computing, big data and intelligence, vending machines will become a new retail format in the future.