"...we gotta go and never stop going till we get there."
-- "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
Let's see, stop for gas, make a personal pit stop, grab a Coke and some chips or maybe a sandwich, check e-mail at the in-store kiosk, download some new MP3s and hit the road again.
E-mail? MP3s? You heard right. That's what they're planning these days at Phillips 66 to make convenience stops even more convenient. And the classic American road trip made famous in film and fiction may never be the same again.
Starting in January, the petroleum company began transforming its Circle K and Union 76 gas station and convenience store chains into e-commerce engines.
Using apps from e-commerce vendor BroadVision, Phillips is expanding its e-commerce offerings at in-store ZapLink kiosks, the company's Circlek.com and 76.com Web sites and on wireless devices
Some initiatives will produce new revenue streams; others will "strengthen loyalty by providing timely information and easy payment options," a spokesman says. Well, I guess it had to happen. And since nostalgia isn't what it used to be, I'm not going to spend much time mourning the open road of the kind described by Jack Kerouac in another age.
But still, e-commerce at the gas station?
"A convenience store does not translate literally to the Web or a handheld," said Scott Templeton, who has the job title of "innovations manager" at Phillips 66. "We can't sell beer, cigarettes and soft drinks online. But we can sell -- and give away -- new forms of convenience that will build customer loyalty and make us a pervasive resource in our customers' lives."
Among the pervasive resources is the MP3 music download. Phillips is offering a library of 3,800 songs that customers in Philadelphia-area Circle K stores can download at the in-store ZapLink kiosks. About 35 stores in the Phoenix, AZ area are also marketing MP3s. If all goes well, a larger rollout is planned for 1,000 locations by the end of the year.
The ZapLink kiosks also provide consumers with access to more than 50
Internet shopping sites, so your purchases can make it home even before you get there. And starting in the second quarter, customers who download the pervasive computing application Kronofusion (a Web-based remote access system) will be able to connect to their home or work PC from the ZapLink kiosks, Phillips said.
Of course, you can also fill up your cell phone while you fill the gas tank. Phillips customers will be able to prepay at in-store kiosks for cell phone access from Cricket, a new cellular service that provides unlimited local calling for a flat monthly fee and long distance service through a calling card.
Palm Pilot and Pocket PC users now can use Phillips' kiosks to connect
through an infrared port to AvantGo and Erode and download their e-mail and the latest news. Next year Phillips plans to deploy 80211 protocol and utilize BroadVision software to enable automatic wireless connection to the in-store kiosks from gas station parking lots.
To date the company says it has registered about 13,000 customers on its Web site and by year-end plans to have 100,000 registrants it can market to via e-mail programs.
Hmm, I'm not sure just everyone wants to get e-mail from the local gas
station, but hey, you never know. I just wonder sometimes what people like Kerouac would have made of all this.
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