Kiosks' slow ROI may not slow their growth

Calculating kiosk ROI is no easy matter, but the big, expensive and complex equipment and service costs practically guarantee slow ROI for many vertically-oriented applications. The Wise Marketer has released an interesting article looking at the ups and downs of deploying a kiosk network, but note that the self-service systems promise to meet and exceed their ROI projections when done right:

According to Christopher Rezendes, [Forrester Research] project director for the [2007 kiosk] report, "Our findings provided evidence that the right kiosk deployment can enhance consumer experiences in a broad range of retail businesses. In turn, these enhancements can contribute to higher transaction values and reduced costs in processing these transactions."

"We expect that retailers from a broad range of segments will invest more of their IT, merchandising and logistics talent to deploy kiosks in ways that have immediate and material impact on their customers' experiences and their business units' income statements," Rezendes concluded.