The length of time Italians spend ordering at vending machines affects their actual desire to pay

A study on purchasing behavior at vending machines shows that time is strategic: 32% of expenses are decided in 5 seconds. The Internet of Things applied to distributors to study how consumers deal with it

The comparison is with late-night forays to the refrigerator on a hot summer night. You open it and peer through the shelves to find something quick and tasty that will calm your unjustified languor. If there is nothing that satisfies, or worse if the compartments are half empty, the sense of frustration is strong and leads to closing the door dissatisfied. This is what Italians do even in front of the snack and coffee machines.

It takes us on average 14 seconds to purchase a product at the automate vending machines 

Taking longer is a gamble for those who sell drinks and snacks. If we linger beyond the minute, the desire passes: we abandon the machine and go back to work empty-handed. And those who sell don’t collect. This is explained by research by the Polytechnic University of Marche together with Confida (Italian Automatic Distribution Association).

For the purposes of the study, four RGB cameras were used, aimed for 12 weeks at the same number of vending machines located in different spaces. That is, in a university, in a hospital, in a self-service area and in a company. Big data experts then processed the information collected.

The results describe some of the consumption trends in one of the sacred moments of workers’ daily life. They explain that the more time you spend in front of vending machines, the less you buy. 32% of purchases happen in the first 5 seconds. Only 2% after 60 seconds. Italians go to the vending machine without fail, they are routine aficionados. And they tend not to exaggerate: only 9.9% of customers buy more than one product. Which in most cases is coffee. Over 2.7 billion coffees were consumed at vending machines last year, for an increase of 0.59%. 11% of the coffee produced globally is consumed at the vending machine. Translated: 150 billion consumed.

The vending machine sector is also moving towards the internet of things with increasingly connected objects that managers monitor to perfect the service. And the numbers pay off. New generation vending machines, especially those equipped with cashless payment systems, attract 23% more users.

The advantages are also on the manager’s side. “Telemetry systems allow you to control the machine remotely via the network. This way we can notice in real time if there are any products missing or if there is a fault”, explains the president of Confida, Massimo Trapletti. Furthermore, “mobile payment, through apps, allows us to communicate with the consumer, analyzing their preferences”.

The market for automatic food and drink distribution and portioned coffee (capsules and pods) had a turnover of 3.5 billion euros last year. For 11.1 billion total consumptions. Numbers that closed 2017 with growth of +3.5%.

Confida, with Accenture, carried out a study analyzing the automatic and portioned food sectors in 2017. Automatic food grew by 1.87% for a value of 1.8 billion and a total of 5 billion consumed. Italians are particularly interested in cold drinks (+5.01%), equal to 19.7% of deliveries.

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