mondelez
Sweet Results With an Improved Vending Experience
What if... innovative vending machines could reach the customer at the point of purchase and influence purchasing behavior?
Mondelez International is a multinational confectionary, food, and beverage company that sells global and local brands like Oreo, Cadbury, and Sour Patch Kids candy to companies around the world.
Strategic Insight
Mondelez makes and sells some of the world’s biggest snacks, including biscuits, chocolate, candy, gum, and powdered beverage products. These products are sold both in stores and in vending machines.
The company wanted to gain greater insights into how consumers interact with its products and the impact of real-time marketing on purchasing decisions. To do this, we built next-generation vending machines that could collect information to produce those insights into the consumer.
An Innovative Vending Experience That Dynamically Interacts With Consumers
Mondelez wanted to interact with customers at the vending point of purchase in an attempt to impact purchasing behaviors, enhance brand recognition, and increase revenue.
We developed next-generation vending machines featuring a 40-inch touch screen instead of a clear pane of glass, creating a fully interactive customer experience that includes 3D product models and advertising. The machines also collect anonymous demographic metrics, and provide user interaction tracking data.
After development and deployment, our team remained involved, demonstrating at trade shows, accompanying Mondelez on product sales calls with operators interested in the machines, and assisting with people looking to buy advertising. We also managed product support for Mondelez and its vending operator partners.
We put to work our experience and expertise in retail and the Internet of Things to design and develop a platform for managing software on deployed vending machines. The platform includes capabilities to update the user experience remotely, configure product mixes, schedule user-specific advertising, and collect data points for each customer view, screen touch, and purchasing decision for business intelligence reporting.
As a result, Mondelez increased product sales by securing a larger percentage of product mix placement in the vending machines, as well as adding a new revenue stream via advertising sales. Anonymous demographic and interaction information provides new data on what product customers are purchasing, at what time, and how advertising influences those purchasing decisions.
Perficient enabled us to take an interactive vending machine concept and transform it into a working product that not only delivers consumer interactivity, but also provides a dynamic platform to deliver interactive advertising and promotion.Associate Director of Marketing, Food Service/ Vending
Results
Increased Revenue and Deeper Customer Insights
Mondelez saw increased revenue from lifting product sales and opening a new digital out-of-home advertising channel. Bringing the solution to its internal brands grew outreach opportunities and a new way to measure market success for new product launches.
The new machines provide consumers an innovative, personalized, and pleasing alternative to the outdated vending experience, including user experience improvements like vending multiple products in a single transaction.
Targeted advertising with free sample opportunities also increased consumer satisfaction and repeat engagement.
Our unique ability to combine innovative thinking, user-centric visual design, years of IoT and retail experience, and product lifecycle management made us the perfect partner to provide a true end-to-end solution.
