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

• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Author: Dobromir Stoyanov
• Date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12362

ARTICLE

The role of vending channels in marketing:

A systematic review and taxonomy of studies

Dobromir Stoyanov

EM Strasbourg Business School,

HuManiS research center (UR 7308),

Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg,

France

Correspondence

Dobromir Stoyanov, EM Strasbourg

Business School, HuManiS research

center (UR 7308), Université de

Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France.

Email: dstoyanov@unistra.fr

Abstract

Although vending machines emerged centuries ago, only

recently have they regained popularity. This study aims to

provide a systematic review of available marketing litera-

ture 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 manage-

ment, health nutrition promotion, and stakeholders' com-

mitment 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 espe-

cially pertinent with the increase in safety-related articles

since 2014 and the current COVID-19 pandemic.

KEYWORDS

systematic review, retail marketing, vending

1|INTRODUCTION

Due to various socioeconomic factors (e.g., social status, rapid income growth, urbanization),

the proportion of income spent on food prepared and consumed outside the home has been

Received: 23 August 2019Revised: 9 December 2020Accepted: 2 January 2021

DOI: 10.1111/joca.12362

© 2021 American Council on Consumer Interests.

654 J Consum Aff. 2021;55:654–679.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joca

consistently increasing around the world (Lachat et al., 2012; Blick et al., 2018; Patel

et al., 2018). In the previous century, most food was consumed at home in the family unit.

Today, consumers are spending more time at the workplace and on the road, frequently relying

on convenient retail formats such as fast-food outlets, schools, restaurants, and vending

machines (Coulston et al., 2017). In the United States, the nominal Food Away-From-Home

(FAFH) consumption accounts for $969 billion or 55% of total food expenditures in the country

(United States Department of Agriculture, 2020). Ganetson and Mauser (1963) foresaw this

trend, predicting that more and more people, pressed for time, will become time-buying

consumers:

The affluent citizen of the next century will be oriented to buying time rather than

product. He will take the myriad of sophisticated products at his disposal for

granted. His chief concern will be to provide himself with free time in which he

can conveniently use products that function to conserve time, for leisure and plea-

sure. It is scarcity which creates value. Hence, as scarcity of product disappears, the

scarcity of time ascends the value scale. (Ganetson and Mauser, cited in

Risch, 1987, p. 60)

However, these new consumption patterns associated with higher energy intake (Lachat

et al., 2012) often lead to undesirable anthropometric changes in society (Nago et al., 2014) and

require a higher level of responsibility from FAFH marketers and state authorities to ensure

healthy education, nutrition, and well-being of the population. Moreover, health-related topics

in food marketing have been rarely systematically reviewed though such reviews are useful to

highlight successful marketing practices and relevant policy issues adopted globally and identify

potential gaps or inconsistencies to be addressed in future studies (Silchenko et al., 2020).

Vending machines, as “a turnkey ready solution, which provides customers with products

and services anytime and anywhere”(Wolpert and Roth, 2020, p. 38), have important market-

ing applications (Stoyanov, 2014, 2015) and play an essential role in FAFH consumption.

According to the European Vending and Coffee Service Association (2020), more than 90 mil-

lion food and drink items are purchased from vending machines every day, and about 295 mil-

lion customers are served at least once a week. The new generation of vending machines

connected to the internet and adopting innovations such as customer telemetry, cashless pay-

ments, and touchscreens (i.e., smart vending machines) has the potential to become increas-

ingly ubiquitous in the following years and completely boost customer experience (Solano

et al., 2017). In 2020, the international market of smart vending machines was estimated at $6.5

billion and in 2027 it is expected to reach $17.1 billion (Research and Markets, 2020).

Although historically speaking, the evolution of vending channels started in ancient times

with the first coin-operated dispenser of holy water (Segrave, 2015), it is only recently that

vending channels have started to regain popularity in the business landscape as retail providers

of customer convenience (Hehle and Schnedlitz, 2012; Bolton, 2019). However, there is a lack

of adequate literature on many marketing aspects of vending channels and their relations to

consumer behavior (Lee, 2003; Hehle and Schnedlitz, 2012). The available research in the field

is limited in scope and scattered across various journals and scientific disciplines, predomi-

nantly in the fields of medicine, public health nutrition, industrial engineering, and logistics.

During the last few years, to the best of our knowledge, there have been three attempts to

review the existing literature. While they have covered some marketing aspects, they have

mainly explored the topic from the following perspectives: factors encouraging consumers to

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