Articles
Counting Kiosks — Growth And Trends In A Self-Service World By Mike Pruitt, Epson America, Inc.
April 4, 2007
•Article: Counting Kiosks
With highly intuitive user interfaces and faster-than-ever processing speeds, today's kiosk is
designed more intelligently than ever. Kiosks have transitioned from being mainly informational,
providing functionality like store directories and informational lookup, to mostly transactional,
where customers can not only access information but also complete a number of transactions,
like ticket sales, airline check-in and self-checkout. According to IHL Consulting Group's 2006
North American Self-Service Kiosks Study, North American consumers were predicted to spend
$475 billion at self-checkout lanes, ticketing kiosks and other self-service machines in 2006,
increasing to $719 billion in 2007. With increased growth in spending, it is not surprising that
according to Summit Research Associates 2007 Kiosk Industry Sector Report for Retail, the
number of retail kiosks will double by 2009.
Two of the top kiosk solution providers are retail technology giants IBM and NCR; it follows that more kiosks are being incorporated into the point-of-sale (POS). "Kiosks are fundamentally changing the way consumers do business," said Greg Buzek, president, IHL Consulting Group. "Among retailers who offer self-checkout, we are seeing self-checkout numbers in a range from 15 to 40 percent of the total transactions. Usage is even more impressive at airports, where some airlines estimate that nearly 80 percent of passengers are avoiding the traditional check-in process and using self-check-in machines instead."
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