8Kava Labs Research
Strategy
Formats, locations, media and platforms: the decisions that shape an unattended retail business for years.
Vending Location Scoring: A Better Model Than the 300-Employee Rule
"You need 300 employees for a micro market" is a proxy for demand, and proxies fail. A scoring model built on presence, food gaps and dwell time shows why a 140-person warehouse can outsell a 320-person headquarters.
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Platform Lock-In in Unattended Retail: A Contract and Data-Portability Checklist
Joining a platform is always easy. Leaving is where the cost hides: readers keyed to one processor, sales history you can't export, renewal clauses nobody reread. This is the checklist we'd want in hand before signing.
Retail Media on Vending Screens: Formats, Closed-Loop Measurement and Who Gets Paid
A cooler door screen is tiny next to a grocery chain's media network. But it has something the big networks pay heavily to approximate: the ad and the purchase happen on the same device, seconds apart.
Smart Cooler vs. Micro Market vs. Vending Machine: How to Choose by Site
Format choice is usually made at a trade show and justified later. Here's a framework that starts from the site instead: daily transactions, hours, assortment, and how much you can trust the room.
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