Payment and product selection from vending machine now typically follows the following sequence:                (a) The customer inserts cash or swipes a payment card using a reader on the vending machine;        (b) The customer makes a single product selection by selecting the numeric or alphanumeric identifier for the location of the visible product in the vending machine;        (c) The vending machine vends the selected product and provides change, if required, based on a stored product price for the selection made.        
Although this sequence was original a consequence of the mechanical design of early vending machines, this is still the sequence used on machines with modern, electronic controllers.
Vending machines with drinks that are not visible, typically soft drinks in cans, often have a small number (e.g., six) of buttons for drink selection. Those buttons typically have the name of the product, and often, a brand or other visual product identifier on, next to, or visible through the button.
This system suffers from a number of product sale weaknesses that do not affect the majority of non-vending point-of-sale purchases. For example, making multiple product purchases at the same time requires repeating the full sequence of steps from the start for each desired product. As a second example, the price is constant for all customers, with no possibility of sales, coupons, promotions, or loyalty programs. As a third example, there is no practical method to provide additional information about a product, except as what can be seen from the front of the vending machine. As a fourth example, there is no customer service possible, such as product recommendations based on current or prior product preferences of the customer. As a fifth example, for most machines, the customer is selecting a desired product via a crude identifier, such as C7, rather than the name of the product, which is what the customer knows. As a sixth example, the user interface for different vending machines is not consistent. As the customer uses different vending machines the customer has to examine and figure out the exact requirements of each particular machine, such as the location of the desired product, how the identification codes are entered, and the price.
This invention overcomes all of these weaknesses of the current vending technology, which is the prior art.
Some vending machines now have a LCD panel, which may also be a touch panel. This more sophisticated interface provides some benefits, such as the customer being able to select products by name or icon. However, there are major drawbacks to this approach. First, the panels are expensive. Second, it is difficult to retrofit the vending machines. Third, the panels present a much higher risk of vandalism or failure. Fourth, the use of the panels does not enable customer-centric knowledge, such as product preferences, or loyalty programs.
Vending machines present unique sales and customer services challenges considerably distinct from physical stores, catalog purchase, and internet purchases.
Prior art includes user interfaces for non-vended products, such as provided by Amazon.com or Netflix.com.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds