Newsmakers

L.J. Skaggs Distinguished Professor and Director of the Retail Management Institute, Kirthi Kalyanam provided expert insight into Bevmo’s newly incorporated tech tools at three of its Bay Area locations. Bevmo’s “talking shelf” is reinventing shopper’s in-store experience but rewards from implementing this technology seem slim. This talking shelf, “Bev”, provides recommendations for customers after a given series of questions, but as Kalyanam states, shoppers may not be ready for this drastic change. While he acknowledges the difficulty of finding knowledgeable sales staff for Bevmo, Kalyanam suggests that a shift in the type of in-store interactive technology that the company offers would be in Bevmo’s best interest.

“People are not comfortable talking to shelves in public,” he said in the article. “We have not reached a point in our society where talking to a shelf is seen as cool.”

Read the full article »

Learn more about Professor Kirthi Kalyanam »