A new type of vending machine made its appearance in Japan these days (it is so new that Japanese people themselves take pictures of it). The vending machine is made of a large touchscreen where products are displayed graphically and can be selected by tapping on them, as shown in the picture below.
Although I like the final result and I can foresee many opportunities to display interactive content on the screen to better inform users about the products they are about to buy (e.g., display on the screen details about the product, relative advertisements, reviews of other customers, etc...), I can also see some limitations or possible abuses of this approach. Moreover, it is worth noting that while Japanese adopted a virtual visual representation of the products, in Korea they choose a diametrically opposite approach: they display the real physical products in a small glass-made cabinet (see also this post).
Although both alternatives are valid solutions, I personally like better the idea of displaying the real product, both because makes the purchase more transparent and because I believe that the real product can convey more information than a virtual representation (e.g., the same difference that exists between looking at the picture of a Big Mac and the real one). I also wonder about the cost-effectiveness of these new vending machines: are they able to better persuade people to buy their products? Nevertheless it remains an interesting approach.
Thank you to Jean-Charles for sharing these images.
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2 comments:
Isn't the Big Mac the worst example? I mean, having a real Big Mac instead of the juicy fake Big Mac on the picture would probably keep most people away from buying it ;-)
You are right, but what I meant is that the picture of the Big Mac might be considered deceiving if too different from the actual burger. This technique can be advantageous but also dangerous for the reputation of a product. Thanks for the feedback
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