Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Value Pricing In The Vending Business

Starting a vending business is not just about buying and placing vending machines at good locations. It involves recording and tracking of transactions as well as employee operations through various methods and management tools. Planograms and handheld computers can be used to track product turnover so that Planet Antares vending operators find the means to monitor and control the product turnover with minimal extra labor.

Recently, there has been a huge increase in the number of players in the vending industry. With such an increase, there is aggressive competition amongst the vending operators to obtain and retain customers for higher sales and revenue. The $40 billion vending industry has become highly competitive and you must introduce cost reduction and profit maximisation for surviving in it.

Planet Antares vending operators complain that the retailers and channels are able to increase prices without too much hassle as compared to the vending products. The main determinants of vending prices are customer account contracts and competition, not customer needs. An effective strategy for pricing would be to enhance the sales and profits.

In the beginning, there were hardly any vending operators who had the imperative resources for monitoring the results of vending transactions. Now, the situation has changed drastically. Amongst the various theories for solving the product pricing issue, one says that operators can enhance customer chocies and satisfaction through offering secondary products at a discount.
This will result in higher sales and profits for your vending business.

As far as sales accountability and driver execution is concerned, the majority of the Planet Antares vending operators believe that simplicity is the key to product pricing. They believe that any advantages created by more strategic pricing would be minimal in relation to risks associated with more complicated strategies of pricing.

The current economic scenario is the ideal time to test the value pricing because of several reasons such as:

a) Lowering of location sales due to downsizing which has made it the best time to buy lesser from established, experienced suppliers.

b) Special offers are appreciated by consumers as they get more price conscious.
As technological advancements become popular, better tools are evolving to handle both the above factors. Some of these include handheld computers and improved machine and software planograms.