Lithuania’s lottery operator Olifeja took players’ desire to control their success to the next level. Since 50% of lottery ticket sales in Lithuania are generated by retail that is currently focused on self-checkout areas development, Olifeja created new sales and technological cycle, allowing players to print preferred lottery tickets while shopping via self-checkout.
Three of Four shoppers Prefer Self-Service
As a result of the growth of self-checkout in the country, the number of service lanes selling lottery tickets shrunk by 1,000 in five years, from 7500 to 6500. A survey conducted in 2017 showed that every second buyer gives priority to self-service checkouts and tend to use it three times out of four when shopping. Another 29% of shoppers use self-service as well, only less frequently.
More importantly, nine of 10 of self-checkout shoppers are (very) satisfied with their shopping experience, with the main reasons of it being listed as: fast shopping (70%), higher convenience when buying fewer goods (66%) and shorter queues (50%).
Having achieved such a positive reaction and shoppers already being well trained to purchase their own goods is very relevant and useful in the context of COVID-19 as well. It ensures a very limited interpersonal interaction. Adding to that, merchants only need 1 employee to look after five to 15 self-checkout lanes. Services’ digitalization also reduces margin of error while increasing flexibility of the system itself.
Benefits Going Three Ways
By the end of 2020, 80% of Lithuania’s self-service areas will be equipped with software and printers allowing every buyer to print his own lottery tickets for three draw-based games: EuroJackpot, Viking Lotto and Teleloto (Bingo). The rest of the games (Keno and national lotto ‘Jega’), will be launched later, as their volumes are much smaller. Scratch lottery tickets must be purchased at the regular cash lanes with the cashier.
“When retailers started talking about installing self-checkout areas, we quickly realised that our sales strategy will have to adapt to it. It took over a year to create and fully implement the entire process of tickets printing but we turned this threat to an opportunity to all groups of stakeholders – buyers, merchants, and lottery operators,” said Tadas Malinauskas, Sales Director Olifeja.
With this implementation, buyers got the opportunity to play lotteries while being in control of entire ticket sale process, merchants increased the range of products sold in self-checkout areas together with customer satisfaction, and Lotteries got to stabilize their margin of sales.
In order to achieve it, Olifeja turned to their partners such as Perlas Network, already overseeing and developing technology and processes behind company’s lotteries with a proposal to take part in creating a unique hi-tech solution. It is how The PerlasGate, already handling lottery sales in 650 POS, was created.
Dive into Technical Capabilities
PerlasGate is capable of processing lottery ticket information, draw related data, as well as APIs transmitting data in the cycle – central lottery system–POS devices–lottery ticket printers. “PerlasGate was first launched in 2019, at 2 of 4 largest retail chains in Lithuania. It operates at 180 retail shops and 190 convenience stores now,” Malinauskas shared.
“Together with PerlasGate tech solutions, we had to create means for physical involvement since players are used to physically touch the ticket to select preferred-one. It is significant part of their consumer profile. For this reason, a unique token to be scanned at the register for every draw game was introduced. Hereby providing both, stable consumer experience that is extremely important to older players, whilst integrating it to a more modern way of providing services,” he added.
Olifeja is happy that the process engages self-checkout buyers while putting success of selecting the ticket and winning grand prizes directly into their hands. Coverage of the remaining 20% of self-checkout areas in set to take place at the beginning of 2021. Later, both processes will go hand in hand.