According to the new research report titled “Self-service kiosks Market Forecast to 2027 – COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis,” published by The Insight Partners, the market is expected to reach US$ 21,415.4 million by 2027, registering a CAGR of 8.6% from 2020 to 2027.

With rising technological advancements, the adoption of Intelligent Personal Assistant & Knowledge Navigator applications—such as Cortana and Siri—in self-service kiosks is constantly witnessing an increase. These self-service kiosk solutions are designed to enhance the consumer engagement with the machine by leveraging data analytics for governing the quantity sales, customer purchasing habits, and many other criteria. They also suggest the right alternatives and incentives to further boost the customer purchasing decisions. Self-service kiosks also boost the business revenues and augment the customer ties by offering major growth opportunities to the market. Several vendors are developing advanced self-service kiosks for providing enhanced online shopping alternatives to their customers in order to promote products and services across the stores. These self-service kiosks permit the interfacing capabilities to boost the retailers’ experience by providing substantial product demos as well as permitting the retailers to sell goods and items without stocking up. Furthermore, the implementation of advanced technological solutions, such as QR codes, RFID, and smartphone transactions, for payment transactions to help the consumer to check out their purchases by using smartphones, gift cards, and credit/debit cards among others. This, in turn, is throttling the growth of the self-service kiosks market.

The self-service kiosks offer several benefits to service providers, such as optimization of the overall cost of businesses by reducing the infrastructure set-up and labor cost. The self-service technologies permit the user to manage various services independently, without the participation of any representatives. They offer a higher level of customer satisfaction by offering control over their purchase decisions. These factors have led to the widespread adoption of self-service interactive kiosks in the urban areas. Furthermore, to boost the urban living, self-service kiosks offers several valuable services—such as advertising, live transit feeds, free unlimited Wi-Fi access, and emergency notifications—to users. Rising adoption of Internet of things (IoT) and other smart connected devices is further adding value to consumer experience. Smart kiosks are integrated with the world-class technologies, such as machine-to-machine communication, cloud, and IoT. Therefore, by leveraging these advanced technologies/platforms, the self-service kiosks offer cost-effective access to information.
Moreover, owing to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with shutting down of manufacturing unit across different sectors, all major retail stores (except stores that were offering essentials), restaurants, and hotels had withdrawn their services for at least 5 months in all the major economies. Many small retailers who were planning to implement kiosks system in the beginning of 2020 have postponed their kiosks implementation process. However, with slow recovery from COVID-19 cases in the beginning of 2021, many retail stores across the globe have started rebounding in terms of sales. The footfall in malls and restaurants in 2021 is slowly reaching the pre-lockdown situation, thereby helping the self-service kiosks market to recover.  

Key Findings of Study:
The global self-service kiosks market is fragmented into five major regions—North America, Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, the Middle East & Africa (MEA), and South America (SAM). North America is expected to hold the largest market share throughout the forecast period since the region is considered a mature market in terms of technology adoption. The US is a developed country in terms of modern technology and IT infrastructure. Technological advancements have led to highly competitive markets across North America. The region hosts several technological giants that invest significant amounts in the development of robust technologies. The US has been clearly past the phase of early adoption self-service kiosk solutions. With continuous increase in data transactions in B2C, B2B, and more, several organizations and their partners are projected to grow in the near future. Numerous enterprises are showing interest in self-service kiosk solutions to interchange their data accurately, efficiently, and safely. North America holds the largest market share due to the high demand from the finance, retail, travel, entertainment, and healthcare industries. Mounting focus of the retailers on meeting the emerging customer requirements is further boosting the investments in the development of interactive kiosks in this region. Moreover, the retail stores were affected severely in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak. According to the real estate firm, CoStar Group, as many as 12,000 stores were temporarily shut in the US in 2020; J.C Penney and GameStop were among the key retail brands that closed their stores in 2020. Similar trend was visible in the hospitality industry. However, the healthcare industry has been resilient in these times of pandemic. Enterprises that were likely to implement kiosks system in 2020 had to either delay the implementation plan or scrap it completely, thereby impacting the demand for self-service kiosks. However, as the lockdown appears to be easing and operations are resuming, the demand for self-service kiosks is expected to pick pace.

Significant strategic initiatives by several industry players are observed in the market; for instance, in 2020, Valyant AI declared a partnership with KIOSK Information Systems (KIOSK) to create contactless experiences driven by conversational AI across environments in which kiosks are deployed. Similarly, in 2019, NCR Corporation and ClearPath, Inc. piloted self-service technology that can help more than 12 million legal residents complete and file their US immigration forms quickly, reliably, and cost-effectively. As part of the first pilot, new NCR eGovernment kiosks were installed in five Houston, Texas retail stores operated by the Barri Financial Group.