The role of vending channels in marketing: A systematic review and taxonomy of studies

Abstract

Although vending machines emerged centuries ago, only recently have they regained popularity. This study aims to provide a systematic review of available marketing literature on food and drink vending channels to delineate under‐researched marketing areas that require further investigation. Therefore, the abstracts of 2,409 articles were manually screened, of which 98 were retained as the most relevant for further synthesis. The author organized the existing marketing literature from a consumer point of view around three main areas (i.e., product safety management, health nutrition promotion, and stakeholders' commitment to policy measures) and three roughly equal time periods (i.e., 2000–2006, 2007–2013, and 2014–2020). The analysis identifies areas of vending wherein research is lacking: marketing trends regarding smart vending machines; consumer responses to vending experiences, especially cross‐culturally; and safety issues, which is especially pertinent with the increase in safety‐related articles since 2014 and the current COVID‐19 pandemic.

Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? A vending retail study

“…Considering that vending retail marketing is an emerging research field (Stoyanov, 2021а, b), we adopted an inductive approach for theory building to select the independent variables for our experimental design, that involved conducting a focus group interview with six managers in different positions in the vending industry to identify the marketing mix elements perceived as the main sources of future competitive advantage in the industry. The results revealed product quality, payment system and internal location as the primary sources of future competitive advantage (see Appendix).…”

“…A recent systematic review revealed that, over the last 20 years, vending retail channels were studied extensively from a social standpoint (to improve health and nutrition in schools and universities) but their retail marketing aspects have been long neglected (Stoyanov, 2021b). Additionally, some studies have been dedicated to inventory management and industrial engineering (Grzybowska et al, 2020).…”

“…The vending industry is an example of an industry in which the majority of vending retailers ( vending machine operators ) are SMEs that have not examined the synergistic effects of their marketing mix (Stoyanov, 2021b). According to Euromonitor International (2020), the revenues of the French market—a mature European vending retail market and the seventh largest worldwide—are expected to grow from €538 million in 2020 to €764.1 million in 2025.…”

“…A recent systematic review of vending-related literature revealed that there have been no studies on the retail marketing effectiveness of vending channels and their related marketing synergy (Stoyanov, 2021b). Moreover, the blue-sky speculative schemes have been one of the historical problems in the vending industry since the previous mid-century (Segrave, 2015).…”

How smart technology empowers consumers in smart retail stores? The perspective of technology readiness and situational factors

“…The core distinction lies in that (1) traditional attended retail stores totally rely on the operation and management of in-store personnel to deal with consumer inquiries and checkout and that (2) digitally transformed/developed retail stores are only an upgraded version of the former through adopting e-service touchpoints (Barann et al, 2022 ) or implementing partial technological solutions reducing, rather than replacing, manual operation, including retail information systems (e.g., inventory management, retail enterprise resource planning), self-service checkouts, and mobile payments; in other words, digitally transformed retail stores still largely provide a staffed shopping environment for customers. Additionally, smart retail stores do not encompass vending machines alike self-service business models that do not offer an immersive in-store shopping environment with various embedded smart technologies (Stoyanov, 2021 ). Apparently, the “brick and mortar” nature also distinguishes smart retail stores from online retailers, which can never fulfill consumers’ need for a tactile retail experience.…”