Project Profile: Nespresso’s Interactive Sales Kiosks Now in 250+ Sites
December 3, 2012 by Dave Haynes
Swiss food giant Nestle Group markets its Nespresso coffee machines and capsules very deliberately as upmarket and special. You can’t buy the capsules in grocers or mass merchandisers. You instead have to order online or go to a handful of retail stores that are packaged up like snooty, high fashion boutiques.
I know this because I have a Nespresso machine and once in a while, like this weekend, drop by the ONE store in all of Toronto to pick up some capsules and put up with coffee snobbery in full flight. Let’s just say standing in line for 10 minutes to buy something is not a barrel of monkeys when you know the delay is nothing but the people ahead of you doing tastings and getting walked by sales people through the strength and aroma characteristics of the many different coffee capsules.
DO THAT SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN THE CHECKOUT!
But … the machine is great, and I almost always just order online (though that’s also more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be – if anyone from Nestle is reading this).
News that Nespresso is extending its retail footprint some more, via interactive kiosks, is intriguing. As they can do product education digitally, also allow people like me to order capsules on the go.
The company now has more than 250 of these sales kiosks in stores globally, all running a set-up using the French company IntuiLab’s software. The units are in stores across Europe and farther afield in places like Argentina, Australia, Israel and Hong Kong.
The rollout follows a 2011 pilot that had Nespresso launching a new sales channel inside large department stores. IntuiLab says in a press release that the coffee brand wanted to:
- accelerate the recruitment of customers for this shop-in-a-shop experience
- energize their image to appeal to new customers
- speed the time to purchase
With the help of IntuiFace Commerce, these objectives were translated into a luxury experience combining the clean aesthetics of the brand with a modern, innovative and memorable digital application. The result was an elegantly crafted interactive application – on display technology supplied by 3M – equipped to enable both self-service as well as assisted promotion and selling.
The software’s core capability combines product browsing and filtering with selection. Secondary capabilities include brand promotion, 3D informational views, live call center access for ordering and backend monitoring for analytic collection. Throughout, fully interactive high-definition images, video and 3D modeling create eye-catching effects that capture attention and inspire purchase.
And behind the scenes, an enterprise class software infrastructure enables centralized remote monitoring, management and updates, easing installation and set-up by non-technical personnel across the globe.
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