From the data of Europe, North America, Japan, and the United States, vending machines are becoming increasingly important in daily life and are widely used in various public facilities, such as airports, train stations (subways), squares, residential areas, schools, hospitals, commercial office areas, and commercial streets. New retail has become an inevitable trend in future social development, and adopting self-service unmanned methods is confirmed. Vending machines have a significant development prospect, offering massive data and convenience advantages over unmanned retail stores and stronger operational capabilities.
Due to high loss rates, the public has eliminated open storage shelves, and enclosed smart cabinets have become the focus of the market. However, there are still many challenges in large-scale implementation. The main issue is the relatively high cost of smart cabinets, and operational costs for procurement and restocking still need to be addressed. There are two main routes: one is self-operated, creating and arranging a supply chain and logistics team; the other is cooperating with traditional retail, such as family start-ups and community convenience stores, where the shop owner takes on operational management. However, the challenge lies in the difficulty of ground promotion, which requires the shop owner to invest a certain amount of living costs!
On the other hand, vending machines can meet more diverse and timely consumer needs and serve as an excellent complement to the traditional retail model. Specifically, small shops act like a manufacturer's wholesale business, only needing to order extra items during daily life to prepare for vending machine products. Emphasis is placed on timeliness and scenario marketing consumption. Since small shops are generally within a few hundred meters, restocking is convenient, and machines can be placed outside the shop, effectively solving the issue of 24-hour shop operation and greatly helping increase turnover!
Vending machines can be considered a brand new retail model, connecting smart products with e-commerce platforms on one hand; and on the other hand, saving space and labor costs, seizing the development opportunities of the new era in the retail industry. They have gradually become a driving force for emerging growth in the declining Chinese retail market. As the development of modern cities accelerates, led by the "post-90s" generation, new consumption is evident. People have higher requirements for shopping flexibility, convenience, and speed, making unmanned commercial services the primary equipment. Smart Vending machines are not restricted by time or location, save labor, and facilitate trade, representing a new commercial retail method.
As vending machine intelligence continues to improve, the development of the global unmanned vending machine industry rapidly expands. People are more proficient in using smart vending machines, with diverse product categories and efficient payment methods, showing promising growth prospects. A prominent group executive expressed optimism about this emerging trend: "In the future, vending machines will become small supermarkets within a hundred meters in certain specific scenarios, enhancing user stickiness. Leveraging intelligent hardware interactions with users to achieve smooth self-service transactions presents a very promising future!"
