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Blockbuster, once the world’s largest chain of home video stores, plans to close upwards of 500 locations across the United States. A necessity due to lowered profits and pressure from net-based video rental services, the once-successful company plans to lower their operating size and focus on high quality store placements and retail outlets. 
Alongside their decision, American DVD rental kiosk company NCR plans to capitalize on the wide open rental spaces. Their ‘Blockbuster Express’ DVD kiosk chain – a highly profitable business which licenses Blockbuster’s name directly – plans to operate in areas left without a Blockbuster rental outlet.
The DVD kiosk chain claims that business would resume as normal if Blockbuster were to go bankrupt. Citing their licensed brand name, the kiosk chain noted that their business is operated independently from Blockbuster, sharing only their marketing materials in order to receive greater levels of customer interest.
Los Angeles rental chain Movie Gallery filed for Chapter-11 bankruptcy earlier this year. With a range of independent and franchised rental outlets struggling to remain profitable, the expansion of kiosk-based rental services could be good for studios, and of course, for consumers.
Hollywood’s major revenue generator – the DVD retail market – is under attack from a range of DVD rental kiosks, primarily the Redbox line of rental kiosks across North America. With film revenues dwindling and long-term rental rates, particularly from retail outlets, falling quite dramatically, Hollywood have begun an all-out offensive against the kiosk-based businesses. 
Online rental company Netflix recently signed a 28-day delay contract with Hollywood’s largest studios, ensuring that films have a fair run on DVD before being brought online as a streaming product. With Redbox and other kiosk-based rental services facing the same delay, it appears that Hollywood’s cartel-style release strategies could result in lost earnings for kiosk companies.
However, Redbox is keen to fight back. With growing revenues and a potentially revolutionary business model, the ever-growing kiosk DVD rental company plans to offer a video streaming service to complement their kiosk-based rental outlets. Available as a paid monthly service, Redbox believe that the online service could potentially beat out rival Netflix and DVD rental outlets such as Blockbuster.
Whether the strategy will succeed or not is unknown. However, with Redbox’s recent success disrupting Hollywood’s retail strategy, it appears that almost anything is possible in the exciting kiosk industry.
Interactive kiosks are quickly shifting from a one-off novelty into a staple asset for businesses. Following the massive success of Redbox – a self service kiosk system placed in shopping malls for DVD rentals – a range of large retail chains, city governments, and travel businesses are beginning to experiment with their own self service kiosks designed for payment, information and education, and automating simple tasks.
Of course, much like business staffing, kiosks are most cost-effective and valuable when optimized for use. For some businesses, this may mean a multi-purpose kiosk designed to minimize overall expenses and streamline in-store operation, while for others it could mean a very defined and single-purpose kiosk, installed with the goal of minimizing specific staffing requirements. 
This flexibility is a key aspect of the ever-growing value of touch screen kiosks. From retail to travel, leisure to local government, kiosks can offer value in almost any industry. These three case studies illustrate how kiosks are changing strategy across three different industries: entertainment, retail, and travel.
How Kiosks are Boosting Cinema Profits:
The film industry has been thrown around over the last decade, but a number of recent technical advances are ensuring its profitability. The first is the installation of ticket kiosks in cinemas and theatre lobbies. With the addition of self service ticket points and payment kiosks, cinemas are lowering operating costs and rapidly increasing their profit margins, allowing moviegoers to enjoy relatively lower ticket prices and decreased wait times at cinemas.
Cineworld, one of the UK’s largest cinema chains, have experienced this boost in moviegoer spending first hand. Since installing automated ticket booths, their per-customer spend has greatly increased, alongside higher levels of customer satisfaction and a much more streamlined movie experience. Since installing touch screen kiosks, staff have been able to focus on major customer concerns more immediately, and overall operating costs have been lowered significantly.
The Effects of Self Service Kiosks in Retail:
Self service kiosks are quickly becoming a common sight in retail settings. UK childcare and baby products giant Kiddicare have implemented retail kiosks into their outlets, with some very positive results. Installed with the purpose of freeing staff to focus on customers, the kiosks have achieved their goals effectively, increasing per-customer spend and maximizing Kiddicare’s ability to focus on customer assistance directly.
A range of factors influence the value of these kiosks installations. On-screen software allows merchants to streamline their sales and information process. Similar to the direct sales process, kiosk software is designed to guide customers through a clear on-screen journey. Multi-purpose kiosks, one of the most effective tools for increasing ROI, benefit most from relatively minimal on-screen information and grounded navigational buttons.
We’ve all heard about the success of movie rental kiosks, such as Redbox, but the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show has thrown up an intriguing industry incumbent. 
DVDs you rent can often end up damaged or unplayable and returning them is as much of a hassle as sending an old fashioned rental back to the shop.
So, Symwave and Xona Media have invented a better way.
They’ve created the MK3 DVD+Digital kiosk, and they’ll be showing it off next year at CES 2010. This kiosk uses USB 3.0 technology to deliver full movie downloads to customers in less than 10 seconds, and will carry an almost unlimited selection of films.
If you don’t have a USB 3.0 capable drive, your old 2.0 stuff will still work with the MK3. Using it is still going to be faster and more convenient than any other movie renting experience. Plus, when you’re done with the film, it just gets deleted from your hard drive. You never have to worry about returns.
Global Axcess Corp, an independent ATM provider with more than 4,500 machines, are branching out into the self-service market with a line of DVD-rental kiosks in 2010. 
CEO George McQuain, who has largely been responsible for bringing the once-struggling Global Axcess back to profitability, says they have a unique opportunity to compete against the major DVD-rental brands.
“We believe there is a largely unmet addressable market for DVD kiosks that will not only allow us to penetrate the market but also allow us to displace incumbents,” McQuain said in December. “Our goal is to leverage our ability to deploy, manage, maintain and process transactions from a wider range of self-service kiosks beyond the traditional ATM. We believe our aggressive move into the DVD kiosk market has significant upside revenue growth opportunities for us.”
During 2009, kiosk revenue grew 94%, with the Redbox-dominated channel approaching $1 billion in revenue. Kiosk rentals were more than enough to offset a 3.2% decline in rentals from brick-and-mortar outlets such as Blockbuster and online sectors.
Over the past 12 months the DVD rental industry has been at war with major entertainment corporations about the pricing of renting movies to the public through kiosk systems.
Many of the major entertainment corporations like Fox and Warner Brothers have tried to hold back on the delivery of rental DVD kiosks to companies like RedBox due to the price being just $1 per rental, as they don’t see the benefit to them.
Now the competition is on between the rental companies who are competing to offer the best deals to their film loving fans.
This week Blockbuster has announced the rollout of 2,500 Blockbuster Express $1-per-day movie rental kiosks through the end of the year, which includes partner/owner NCR Corp. acquiring content, not through Blockbuster, but from DVD distributors and third-party retailers.
Speaking at a recent Pali Capital conference call, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes said the Dallas-based No.1 DVD rental service is receiving a license fee (from 1% to 10%) for use of the Blockbuster name and that NCR is supplying Express kiosks with content acquired through distributors such as VPD and Ingram Entertainment and retailers such as WalMart.
Some of the biggest summer box office sales are due to be released onto the high street over the next few months, and sparks are already flying. Entertainment corporations, Warner Home Video, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment have implemented 28-day, 30-day and 45-day windows, respectively, for their new-release product distributed through kiosks.
“For Blockbuster, that is a real consumer conundrum,” Keyes said. “How do you present the brand value that you want the brand image that you want and constantly disappoint customers?”
The CEO is looking into various ways of gaining the right brand image by changing the price (from $1-$3) for new-release content, which represents 80 per cent of Blockbuster’s business.
“[We are] proactively working on diversifying our content,” Keyes said.
This kiosk war between the multi-national companies proves how fast kiosk deployment is growing in the current market. As businesses try to reduce staff costs, they are also looking for new ways to improve customer experience, hence the installation of DVD rental kiosks in supermarket and retail stores.
However, the battle between the entertainment corporations is a prime example of how many companies are reluctant to adapt to the current economical climate and the need for convenience.
While many DVDs sell at cheaper prices, the top selling box office films still price in at around £13 which is expensive in this day and age and don’t meet consumer requirements.
The move to a kiosk fulfilled environment is still a long way off as major corporations need to adapt to the consumer market but as this begins to happen, then the move will be a lot quicker and beneficial for all.
As much as a self service kiosk sounds like a promising integration into your business, use it incorrectly and it could leave you out of pocket.
Many people fail to identify that in this day and age technology has advanced rapidly and children are growing up knowing it as well as they do the english language.
Here is an outline of the most common mistakes people make when installing a self service kiosk and how you can prevent these problems from occuring.
1. Failing to present a truly compelling offer to the customer dwnload avatar movie
Many businesses rely on the idea that people use kiosks purely because they are a ”cool” and “quirky” new technology. In this instance, many businesses leave the kiosk to its own devices and offer the same standard services which the customer can receive elsewhere.
A self service kiosk adopted into a store is designed to make shopping easier for the consumer without directly affecting their shopping habits. The second it becomes a hindrance is when consumers will use other methods to pay or worst still shop somewhere else.
For example, when redbox rolled out their DVD rental kiosks, they believed that the convenience of renting a dvd in the supermarket was so compelling to consumers they could charge a standard rental fee of $3.99 and succeed.
Eventually reality hit and they had to decrease the price to $1 per day for users to completely change their rental habits and use the kiosk as it was more convenient and cost effective.
2. Relying on intangibles for an attractive ROI
Many businesses who implement kiosks into their business rely on inconclusive figures to retrieve an attractive ROI.
For example, many people assume that if the kiosk helps build the brand, extend the company’s reach or improve the customer experience in turn it will translate to a bigger bottom line.
While all of these items are important when installing a kiosk, it is difficult to find the funding if kiosk installers don’t provide strong data driven evidence of these benefits and how they will help increase profit.
To avoid this, deployers should spend just as much time on the planning the front end of the kiosk as they do planning the actual kiosk system and what it includes.
It is all well if a business designs and implements a self service kiosk flawlessly but if it does not illustrate its advantages then it could lost its potential funding.
A good way to show how kiosks will increase ROI is to conduct a third party consumer survey firm to gather evidence of a possible kiosks success.
3. Failing to differentiate between the pilot stage and the scaling stage
The objective during the pilot stage should be simple and straight forward-deployers must determine whether they have received enough consumer interest to make worthwhile the additional time and resources the scaling stage will require. This means looking at the ongoing costs, staffing and operation of the kiosks following rollout.
4. Failing to realise that the first attempt will be flawed
The first time you roll out a kiosk won’t be perfect as mistakes will only appear when customers have tried and tested the technology.
Some kiosk installers will spend too much time with market research and focus groups which don’t necessarily bring money to the business.
A good way is to get it out on the market at its earliest convenience and see what real consumers think of it and how it could improve as its their opinion that matters the most.
5. Building the Eiffel Tower then placing it next to the storage cupboard
Kiosks are a new and improved form of retail and the essentials to retail is location! location! location! It is completely pointless spending copious amounts of time developing a kiosk to have it sat in the corner of the store out of sight and out of mind.
Careless placement of a kiosk can leave businesses believing the kiosk was a failure and either changing the whole design and development or getting rid of it completely.
Placing it in areas that have high volumes of traffic and target your specific market will be the best solution in order for consumers to get the best out of your business.
For more information about self service kiosks and other kiosk news visit Protouch.
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