Trends In Retail: Smart Vending Machines
Trends in retail are leading to the extinction of the unskilled worker. The JR East Water Business company is helping you decide what you want before you want it. When you start having machines that sell products on their own it is of little importance for a warm body to recommend a product to customers. A smart vending machine very well may be the first step in the direction of machines that sell better than Joe Six Pack, and are clearly more knowledgeable of the products. Lets take a lesson from Issac Asimov and not go full robot.
A smart vending machine is being integrated into Japan’s busy train stations by JR East Water Business. The vending machine has facial recognition software that maps the consumers face then it recommends a drink. The recommendation is based off research conducted to attempt to match what your face looks like to your favorite beverage. To recommend coffee when the consumer looks tired or perhaps even an energy drink makes sense.
I don’t foresee this catching on so well here in the United States when it starts telling 40% of the population to drink diet soda or light coffee drinks. Remarkably this enhanced recommendation process has enhanced sales by 300%, which is actually kind of scary. If this vending machine concept starts to catch on it has the potential to revolutionize the beverage industry. I can see the potential of this putting baristas out of work and causing waves of layoffs.
Career Purgatory - Smart Vending
Previously the company installed two of these machines in JR Shinagawa station. Now in the process of retooling them to be able to recommend other items besides beverages. We welcome to Career Purgatory the next wave of affected employees who are destined to be laid off as a result of machines being 300% more productive than they are.