Allow Customers To Try A Product Before Purchasing It. Once upon a time, you could pop $0.8 into a vending machine and get an ice-cold can of coke. Now, nothing costs $0.8 anymore and there are vending machines for stuff like freshly squeezed orange juice, fresh salads, and even chili crab!
It is a surprising fact to many expats that Singapore is the only country that even has a mashed potato vending machine. We have recently further stepped up our game by introducing the gold automated teller machines and ceramic vending machines.
When we talk about more types of vending machines that need to make their way into Singapore, it is inevitable to bring up a discussion about Try Leh’s free sample vending machines that allow brands to showcase products and services for customers to select and redeem at their convenience.
Try Leh’s Environmentally Friendly Initiative
Try Leh is a Tryvertising service for companies to dispense samples or vouchers to the public using automated vending machines (Kiosks). This service promotes and introduces products & services to a wide spectrum of demographics within high-footfall locations.
Try Leh is providing free sample vending machines in 5 mall locations around the island. These vending machines or kiosks will allow brands to showcase up to 12 items per kiosk to allow customers to see and understand the products before buying them. Consumers may redeem samples that interest them the most.
To cater to service-based brands and those with products that might not physically fit the size of a vending machine, Try Leh launched a virtual vending machine in December 2022. Users were able to redeem e-vouchers through the virtual vending machine with instructions on how to redeem the e-voucher.
Through this initiative, the company hopes to promote what they call “tryvertising”, which means advertising through trying. There is no hard sell in this method and customers are rather given the actual product for free to see if it suits their needs.
At Try Leh, it is believed that when end users get to directly engage with the product, they are more likely to give the brand direct and more authentic feedback. This allows brands to not only generate word-of-mouth but also get the user’s perspective on what improvements need to be made.
How These Product Sampling Vending Machines Work
To use these vending machines, all a consumer needs to do is to create an account online, which gives them credit every week to use at Try Leh kiosks and redeem samples such as beauty products, pet food and vouchers for services.
Try Leh has made redemption easy with their no-typing redemption process. After registration, users are given sample credits which they will use to select the samples they want on the Try Leh website. Once they select their sample, the system will send a QR code to the consumer’s mobile phone in WhatsApp. When they scan this QR code at the kiosk, the sample will be dispensed.
To prevent abuse, Try Leh currently limits sample redemptions to one product/brand (campaign) per consumer and up to 2 samples per week. Consumers are given 2 coins when they sign up, and will receive 2 new coins every Sunday as long as they are subscribed to the programme to redeem more samples. The coins cannot be carried forward to the next week and must be used before the next Sunday.
1 coin is currently equal to 1 sample. A campaign usually lasts for a month. Sample stock availability is updated online so the consumers can see if the sample they are trying to redeem is available and in stock before they go to the physical kiosk to redeem it.
